The Tim Ferriss Show - #751: Elizabeth Gilbert and Jack Kornfield

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Starting point is 00:05:22 Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives. This episode is a two-for-one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about, and past 1 billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes. And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage

Starting point is 00:06:02 you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle. Perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one. We went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at Tim.blog slash combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening. First up, Elizabeth Gilbert, the number one New York Times bestselling author of 10 books, including Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear, which together have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

Starting point is 00:06:55 And her latest book, City of Girls. You can find Elizabeth on Twitter at Gilbert Liz. I thought I would begin with The Alpha wolf, if you don't mind. For those who don't know, this is a moth talk slash presentation story slash tearjerker slash laugh out loud at moments tale. And I saw that Rhea's birthday, her 60th birthday, was just a few days ago. Could you speak to who Rhea was, a little bit of context, and then how you prepared for that? There's quite literally nothing I would rather talk about than Reyes. So you started in a good place for me. So Reya

Starting point is 00:07:47 Elias was quite simply the love of my life. She and I were friends for 17 years. I was married for most of that and just very slowly and very quietly over the years, fell in love with her. She was a lesbian, Syrian, Detroit-raised, rock and roll hairdresser, filmmaker, author, musician who had always wanted to live just right on the edge of life. She had been a speedball heroin junkie on the Lower East Side, New York City in the 1980s, was in Rikers Island, was in Bellevue, was in various rehabs and rehabilitations, was homeless, was, oh God, she'd had such a storied life. And then she finally put it all down and she spent 19 years clean and sober. And when I met her, she was on the other side of that recovery and she was

Starting point is 00:08:43 the strongest, most extraordinary person I ever met. And as I said in that speech that I gave in that talk that I gave at the Moth about her, which I shared a year after she died, she was the most powerful person in every room that she ever walked into. And I adored her. She was my guide. She was my teacher. She was the rock, the ground underneath my feet. She was the one person in the world who always made me feel safe. And she didn't just make me feel safe. The feeling that everyone had when Rhea walked into the room was, oh, thank God, Rhea's here. Everybody is safe. You know, that's what the alpha is, right? The alpha is the person who keeps the entire pack safe. And because she was the most powerful person in the room, what I always knew when she walked in was not only would she make sure I was okay, if anybody was preying on me in any way, she would make sure the people were all right. You know, she just had this way of handling humans like nothing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Starting point is 00:09:47 And I absolutely adored her. And I was a loyal wife and I loved my husband. And the three of us were really good friends. And there was no way in the world that I was ever gonna cross that line. I just kept that love very quietly in my heart. And we all just had a beautiful life together until the day that

Starting point is 00:10:05 she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer. And I got a phone call from her saying that she'd gotten this diagnosis and that they said she had six months to live. And from that point forward, it was no longer possible for me to keep that love hidden. And very swiftly after that, I had a conversation with my husband and said, I need to go and be with Raya. And no one was surprised by this. He wasn't surprised by it. He'd seen it for years. And he very, in one of the greatest acts of courage and dignity I've ever seen anybody do, he very graciously stepped out of the way and we separated and I went to be with her and I was with her until the end of her life. So that's who Rhea was and that's who she was to me. As for that speech that I gave at the Moth, that talk, what I was challenged to do in

Starting point is 00:10:53 12 minutes was to try to get over the net who that person was, the most epic human being I'd ever met. And I decided the way to do that was to tell a few stories about the experience of her death and dying, which were mostly based on ideas that I had about how she was going to become very helpless and I was going to have to be her hero and protect her versus the reality of the situation, which is that she never became helpless. She remained the alpha in the entire situation. She was a really hard patient to take care of for that reason. She absolutely refused to cooperate with my version of some airy-fairy soft hippie dab that I wanted to give to her. And instead, she died the way she lived, like the badass, fierce, unrelenting warrior that she was. And it was brutal, and it was beautiful. And she never stopped taking us by surprise, right? Even up till the last second. And the point is going to come

Starting point is 00:11:50 where that truth is going to become bigger than your plans. And that extended into the way that I tried to manage, I'm using air quotes now, manage Rhea's death. I also went into her death with a plan. We're going to have an enlightened death. We're going to have a real hospice death. We're going to bring grief bereavement experts in here to talk. I mean, I laugh now because it's like, you know, just Raya, like who is such a biker chick. It's like, you're going to bring a fucking grief bereavement expert in here, like to talk to me, you know, like give me a break. I'm going to go down watching football, eating chicken wings and smoking, you know, like this is like like I have no interest in that. So she just waylaid that plan completely and died on her own terms.

Starting point is 00:12:30 I'm just thinking of something that a hospice nurse said to me because we were cracking up one day. I can't remember what it was about, but there's a lot of anybody who's ever been by it. You know, there's a lot of humor that shows up and it is literally gallows humor. You know, it really is like, I've got a picture of me and Rhea's ex-wife and Rhea's ex-girlfriend who were the two women who showed up like champions at the end of her life to help to take care of me and help to take care of her because they loved her so much. And it was also just such a factor of what a boss mac daddy Rhea was that she had like every woman who'd ever loved her came back to take care of her when she was dying you know and to take care of each other and there was a lot of laughter between

Starting point is 00:13:09 the three of us about just like handling this force of nature as she was dying like can we survive it right she's the opposite of a good patient you know and so there was a lot of humor in there and the hospice nurse was laughing with this one day and I said to her it's amazing that you can laugh given the line of work that you're in. She spends her life working with people at the worst, most painful parts of their lives at the end of their lives. And she said, we have a little motto. We say, if you can't laugh at death, get out of show business. You shouldn't be a hospice nurse if you can't laugh. You won't survive. And I'm sure that's what you and I are talking right now in the midst of the COVID crisis. And I've been thinking about

Starting point is 00:13:44 that. I've been thinking about the nurses that I know, and I'm imagining that's what you and I are talking right now in the midst of the COVID crisis and I've been thinking about that I've been thinking about the nurses that I know and I'm imagining that you know there's some dark ass humor happening in those hospitals right now there has to be in the same way that soldiers would tell you about the the humor that happens when you're under fire like there absolutely has to be or you you simply won't be able to survive it. So I will say that the humor is there in those moments. I mean, right after Rhea died, I mean, we had been through such hell with her. And her death was not, as I say, it was brutal. You know, one minute after she took her last breath, her last horrible breath, Gigi, her ex-wife, stood up, brushed off her hands and goes, Okay, so that's done.

Starting point is 00:14:25 I'm going to be on the next flight out of here like at two o'clock. It was hilarious, but it was also just like what Raya would have done. Okay, you guys good? We good? We done here? We just all rolled over laughing in the middle of our tears. And I feel like that humor has to be shot through the entirety of your life or else you really are not going to make it through earth school because earth school is a hard, hard school and it's a hard assignment. And I think the humor is quite literally grace. read that there are times when you'll love a sentence so much that you read that you'll start

Starting point is 00:15:06 clapping by yourself where you happen to be reading. And I would love to know what type of writing, what writers have done that for you, if you could name even a few of them, and what it is, what are the ingredients that lead to that one woman standing ovation often in the bathtub well they say that great art has to contain two features it has to be both surprising and inevitable so that's the great that's good that's good right yeah that's the paradox is that you have to go oh my god God, I didn't see that coming. And that is the only way that could go. I'm thinking of the ending of Breaking Bad, that whole show, but like the last moments of Breaking Bad. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. You've had many years to watch it now,

Starting point is 00:15:56 people. I won't tell you the ending. I will just tell you that I also stood up and applauded at that because it felt both surprising and inevitable. So that's the feeling. You want your whole nervous system to kind of be like, oh my God, I didn't know that could be. And yes, of course, you know, it had to be. And now it's rearranged my DNA in a certain way where I can't be the same now. Poetry tends to do it. The poets have this amazing ability to put that into such a tiny space where it's like the encapsulation of inevitability and surprise. So I'll give you an example of one piece that I love, which is a poem by T.S. Eliot called East Coker that has gotten me through some of the darkest times in my life. Some of those moments in your life where you don't know what to do, right? Where a human being, and this is where I think human life gets really interesting, what happens to people when they reach the end of their power? Because especially in this culture, where we live in a culture that says you should be able to power through anything,

Starting point is 00:16:56 life will very generously remind you that you cannot. And it will very generously break you at times and very generously show you, as we're seeing right now in the COVID virus, we're like, oh, actually there's a limit to our powers here. And it's very humbling. And what do you do when you're at the end of your power? So the poem East Coker is one, and it gets me every single time. How do you spell Coker? C-O-K-E-R. C-O-K-E-R. Yeah, East Coker. And there's a part of the poem where T.S. Eliot writes, Wait without hope, for hope would be hope of the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing.

Starting point is 00:17:37 There is yet faith, but the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. And so the darkness shall be light, and the stillness, the dancing. That's a stand up and applause moment. Yeah, that is a stand up and applause moment. And sometimes when people I know are grieving or they're stuck or they're broken or everything has been taken away, I will give them that poem because that says what I don't know how to say better than that, which is right now you're being asked to wait without hope for anything that you hope for would be the wrong thing and wait without love. Anybody who's been

Starting point is 00:18:12 going through a horrible breakup, I'll give them that poem. You're being asked to wait without love right now because love would be love of the wrong thing. And anybody who's a beginning meditator, I give them that poem because of the line, wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. You don't have the wisdom right now to have the correct thoughts. So you need to wait without thought. And then you will see if you do that. And there's still faith, but the faith is in the waiting. The faith is in waiting without hope, waiting without love, waiting without thought. That's the definition of faith, sitting in the darkness, in the waiting. The faith is in waiting without hope, waiting without love, waiting without thought. That's the definition of faith, sitting in the darkness, in that waiting. And then you will see how the darkness becomes light and the stillness becomes dancing,

Starting point is 00:18:53 but only every time. In order to have it, you've got to give up hope and you've got to give up love and you've got to have faith only in the waiting. So that's a line that makes me applaud. Another author who gets me is, another poet who gets me is Walt Whitman. And Walt Whitman sang, describing himself in A Song of Myself, describing himself as standing both in and out of the game, is again, something that I think of as the highest point of enlightenment. Can you engage with your life? Can you be involved with your life? Can you feel all of the feelings? Can you fall in love? Can you lose? Can you fail? Can you grow? Can you succeed? Can you buck up? And also watch it from a little bit of a detached distance and marvel at the game itself. So that line gets me. And then as far as fiction writers go, I'm so in love with Hilary Mantel, who wrote the Wolf Hall trilogy about Henry VIII and won the Booker

Starting point is 00:19:59 Prize for the first two installments of it. And then the third one just came out. And the way that I've been describing it to people is, imagine if all three Godfather movies were as good as the first two. Imagine if Godfather part three was just as good as one and two. That's how good Hilary Mantel is that the third installment and I'm reading that right now and I'm just it's just a bow down moment you know as an artist there are a lot of writers who I look at their work and I admire them, but I see how they did it because it's almost like a carpenter looking at another carpenter's work and being like, oh, I can see how you did the joints there and you hid that hinge there. And that's cool. I see, well done, you know? And then there are people I look at their work and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:20:39 I literally don't believe that you're human. I don't understand how you can even do this. And that's how I feel about Hilary Mantel writing about 16th century England in a way that is so intimate. And so you cannot read that book without thinking, this is exactly how it happened. And I don't know how she does it. I'm happy to never be able to do that. I'm just lucky to live on earth at the same time as somebody who can. I would push back a little bit. And I would say that you have a rare ability to blend readability with wordsmithing sentences that are very memorable and really strike a chord. I don't think that is easy to do. And I would say Kurt Vonnegut is one who comes to mind, but it's not easy to combine those two things. And it made me crack a smile when I was reading about you appreciating sentences. The quote from you at the end of this portion of the interview was,

Starting point is 00:21:42 it's part of the reason that the arts are around to remind us that we're not just here to pay bills and die, that we're also here to get excited and feel wonder and to feel awe. That's easy to read, but it is something that makes me go, fuck, goddamn, you're totally right. I need more wonder and awe. I'm paying too many bills, spending too much on paperwork. So I do want to applaud that ability. And I'd love for you to speak to what else you've learned from Martha Beck. What are some of the other things that have really stuck for you? I'll give you one more Martha Beck line that I love. She says, there are certain moments of your life where you're standing in front of a bonfire

Starting point is 00:22:21 and you have to jump. You just have to jump into it and you have to be willing to burn away everything that you've been taught and everything that you're afraid of and just do it. And she said, and I remember her telling me this with such glee, she goes, it's such a cool moment that you're in. And she said this to me as I was leaving my marriage and going to be with Rhea. She said that these bonfire moments are so fantastic because there's only two things that can happen when you jump into a bonfire. One of them is that you find out that it wasn't actually a bonfire, that you were afraid that it was going to burn you to pieces, and it actually didn't. It wasn't as scary as you thought. You did it. You took the leap. It turned out to be kind of like warm and soft and easy. So it was no big deal. The other thing that can happen is that it is a bonfire.

Starting point is 00:23:08 And you are incinerated. And your entire life is incinerated by it. And that's even better because then you get to be reborn as a phoenix on the other side, completely new. So either way you win. So there's no reason not to. You'll either jump in and find out it was nothing or you'll jump in and you'll be destroyed. And that's awesome too.

Starting point is 00:23:25 When I say Martha doesn't play by the game, that's what I mean. Like, that's what I mean about she's not even in the arena that we would call any sort of normal way of living. And for that reason, she's been one of the top three most influential people in my entire life. You're like, Martha, do we go left, right or straight? She's like, we go up. You're like, what? How do we do that? That's incredible. Let's talk about the integrity check that sternum to navel area will have to come up with some sort of perineum-like label that makes it a little easier. Intercompass, I think. Because it's a inter compass, there we go. That's where it's located, yeah. When you do, say, an integrity check, and I had read that when Raya was sick, for instance,

Starting point is 00:24:15 you began deleting or archiving emails without responding as a bit of a treat to yourself. Deleting, not archiving, deleting. Okay, deleting, goodbye. And when you say now now check in with yourself and decide to say no to something let's just to make it easy or make it concrete via email you get an invitation from a friend you do actually really like with something that could plausibly advance your career or be fun but you check in with yourself and it's like no this, this isn't a yes. How do you phrase your no's or declines? Do you have any particular go-to language that you like to use? I just want to make sure everybody knows that this is not easy.

Starting point is 00:24:57 I don't want to have any illusions for anybody that this is simple. And the closer the relationship, the harder it is. The closer and more intimately I'm involved with somebody, the more stakes there are for me and the harder it is for me to tell the truth. And that feels like it should be, you know, there's a paradox. The people you love the most should be the people that you're able to be the most honest with. Well, no, because they're the people who you want to hurt the least. That's where it's really, really hard. There's a couple layers of it. I now treat my inbox like it's my home because I think it's an extension of my home. So if somebody walks into my home uninvited and announces themselves

Starting point is 00:25:34 and doesn't say how they got a key and asks for something, I delete that email. I'm just like, I didn't invite you in. There are proper channels. You know what they are. I don't know how you got my personal email. And I just delete it. And if I feel a sense in my sternum of offense, of feeling like this person has taken a liberty, I don't believe that I owe them anything. I don't believe that I owe them anything

Starting point is 00:25:57 any more than if I came down to my kitchen and saw people sitting at my table who I didn't know eating breakfast, I wouldn't believe that I owed them to make them a cup of coffee. I'd be like, get out of my house. You're not supposed to be here. I don't even think I owe them a polite response. I owe them nothing.

Starting point is 00:26:15 I didn't ask you to come into my house. I don't owe you anything. So that's the easiest. Those are ones that are easy. And I now treat myself to doing that. I mean, I do that every day. I clear my inbox out very quickly now. And then I'm entertained when they come back later, and they're like, just circling back. treat myself to doing that. I mean, I do that every day. I clear my inbox out very quickly now.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And then I'm entertained when they come back later and they're like, just circling back. And I'm like, yeah, just deleting you again. Circle back as many times as you want. You are not coming in. So that's simple. If it's a- Just bumping this up, Pixar. Yeah, I'm just bumping you back. And I'm just, it's like whack-a-moles. It's like, I can do this all day. Delete, delete, delete. If it's somebody who I care about, if it's something that I'm interested in, but I'm just not going to do it because I don't want to, I will write back and say, thank you so much. I'm really honored that you invited me to this, but I'm not going to be able to do this at this time. And I don't feel I need to give a reason. I think a simple no is really, really good. And the reason, sometimes the reason it's good not to give an explanation

Starting point is 00:27:10 is that if that person is an expert manipulator, as many of us are, that explanation will not suffice. So it won't matter what you give as an explanation because they can come back and be like, well, we can do it by audio, you know, or we can do, oh, if back and be like, well, we can do it by audio. Oh, well, we can do it a different weekend. Just no. And I learned a lot about this from my teacher, Byron Katie, who teaches an amazing thing called the School for the Work. She's a whole nother being who's not at all living by the rules. She's extraterrestrial for sure. She is extraterrestrial. She is the only fully enlightened human being I believe I have ever met.

Starting point is 00:27:49 And as such, she does not have any trouble saying an honest yes and no to people. Just to underscore that, because I did an in-person training with her. I mean, literally no hesitation, no struggle, no conflict. It's bizarre and mesmerizing to watch. And she loves you. And she loves you. There's also no hostility. And no offense, no hostility.

Starting point is 00:28:18 Somebody came up to her at an event, handed her a book that they'd written, which people do to me all the time too. So I really marveled at this. They said, I wrote this and I want to share it with you. And she said, oh, sweetheart, I'm never going to read that. It's true. It's just true. I've never read that. And I'm like, oh my God, I didn't know you could say that. So that's amazing. And she said it so lovingly, like, oh, no, I have no interest in reading that. So she teaches, I don't know if you did, when you took her training, did you do where she teaches a simple no? And she does the training on how to give a simple no? I don't think we actually spent much time on that.

Starting point is 00:28:52 So I would love to hear you say more. We worked on the emotional one pages and the turnarounds. We did a lot on the turnarounds, which is probably, we could do a whole episode just on that. Everybody look up Byron Katie. She's amazing. And if you have the means and if you have the chance to ever take her nine-day school for the work, it's the most important thing I've ever done for myself. So I'll say that quite simply.

Starting point is 00:29:14 But she has a whole day in the nine-day school for work, which is about the simple no. And the simple no is ways to say no. And it always begins with thank you. And there's never a but, because she feels that the word but is very cruel and it's just an and. So it's thank you and no. And that's it. That's a simple no. And then if they come back, you can say- Well, hold on. Just to pause for a second. Is that literally the phrasing or is it just- Yeah. Thank you and no. Yeah, that's it that's it and it just it still makes my stomach ache because i'm like oh my god you can't just do that you've got to give you've got

Starting point is 00:29:48 to like do the dance and she's like you don't have to do the dance and she's the one who taught me if the person is a good enough manipulator it doesn't matter what you bring they're going to manipulate it and the beautiful thing about a simple no is that it gives in the jujitsu game it gives somebody no weapon that they can take and bring back at you. They can say, you're being incredibly selfish. And you can say, I hear that, and you might be right about that. That's another one. She always says, you might be right about that. You might be right about that. And no. And you just keep adding and no after the statement. So then there's, but you know, I really, I need you to do this. I'm desperate. And you say, I see that. I see your desperation and no. And one other thing she'll add is you can say, if I change my mind about this, I'll let you know and no. And that's been a game

Starting point is 00:30:37 changer for me. So I just did one last week. Somebody who I have a professional relationship said, I want you to do this one hour video interview to promote this thing that I'm doing. And old Liz would have thought I owe her that because she did this other thing for me that time. And I checked in with my inner compass and I was like, nothing in me wants to do that. And so I just wrote back to her. I said, I'm so sorry. And I'm not going to be able to do this at this time. And she wrote back and pushed in and said, oh, let me clarify. I wasn't clear about why we need it. We really need it because right now it's really hard for us to sell things because of COVID-19. And that's why we need it. And I wrote back and said, I hear

Starting point is 00:31:19 you and I understand you and no. And it goes away. They don't tend to come back a third time. It really does just stop and let it sit at the no. The more words you add after that, the more entangled you get. But again, I want to make clear, it's hardest closest to home and it's hardest with family. And with family, I find if I anticipate that I'm going to be asked something, I really have to practice. I really, because it's scary. And I have to really practice and be like, and just practice saying, I'm not doing that right now. I'm not coming this year. And I'll say it a thousand times. I'll just go for a long walk and I'll just practice it and practice it and practice it. Because as I say, the closer the people are to you, the more difficult it is. It has a bit of a personal digression here. I was working on a book, an entire book about saying no this past summer. And the great irony, of course, is that I came up with all the reasons why I shouldn't write the book in the process of putting it together.

Starting point is 00:32:16 But what I noticed as I was practicing different ways of saying no is that it's an incredibly clarifying exercise because it, in a sense, it kind of brings to surface the true character of many people you know, or people who are attempting to reach you. And what I found surprising, and maybe I shouldn't have found it surprising, is that many of my close friends who I anticipated might be upset would respond with, dude, good for you for respecting your boundaries. That's a great line. Rock on. And they got it. And they were just like, oh, I wish I could say that more myself. Like, good for you. And it was the bonfire that wasn't a bonfire in those cases did you ever run into a bonfire that was one oh for sure absolutely and then i'm like oh wow

Starting point is 00:33:13 because if you what i like about what you said about the or the sort of jujitsu analogy is that if you provide really specific reasons for why you can't do it and you elaborate, you've just created a potential negotiation. But if you don't provide that grip, that toehold, then one of the few responses someone can give you if they're upset and still want to push is some type of personal ad hominem attack or an accusation. And then you're like, oh, wow. Okay. Now it's that kind of party. Okay. This is good to know before we're on stage having a public tiff at God knows what. I mean, this is valuable information. So there were definitely some bonfires and basically people just self-immolated because

Starting point is 00:34:03 I was like, oh, wow, you've just proved my internal compass to be extremely accurate. Right. This is the reason and here is the reason I'm not working with you. But you don't even need to say that. You just know it because the body knows first. The body knows first, but only always. Only always. One of the things that Martha says that I love is she's like, because culture and civilization have overwritten the software system of the body so much and told you that you don't trust that, what you trust are the rules and the mores and the fear-based, scarcity-based grasping, this is how you have to act, this is who you have to be

Starting point is 00:34:42 in order to be safe. And meanwhile, your body's like, ew, you know, it's working. No, ew, gross. Or on the opposite side, like yummy. Like, I want to be over there. I want to be with those people. I don't want to be with these people. And if you think about it, the wisdom of the body is so incredible. How many people do you know who said, I knew the night before my wedding that this was a mistake? How many people do you know say that? And yet, why did you do it? Because you were 29 and it was time to get married. Because you'd been raised in a culture that said, this is what you do now. Because the invitations had been sent out. Because 300 people had gathered. Because your family spent $30,000 on the wedding. Like whatever the reasons were, you knew.

Starting point is 00:35:25 Somewhere in that sternum area, you knew. And how much you had to drink that day in order to override that, whatever you had to do in order to shut down that compass that was saying, uh-uh, it's brutal. That's the work of the second half of my life. I can say that now that I'm 50, that the only thing I'm interested anymore is that. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that

Starting point is 00:36:00 supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food source nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. And now, Jack Kornfield, one of the key teachers to introduce mindfulness practice to the West,

Starting point is 00:37:03 author of 16 books, including Bringing Home the Dharma and Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, and a founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. You can find Jack on Instagram at Jack underscore Kornfield. Jack, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you, Tim. Pleasure to reconnect. I have wanted to have you on the show for some time now, and you've had certainly a tremendous impact on my life, both through your writing and through firsthand in-person interaction,

Starting point is 00:37:43 which I think we'll touch upon. But first, I wanted to ask you a complete non sequitur from that, which is something that our mutual friend Adam Ghazali suggested I ask you about. And Adam, for people who don't know him, is an incredible PhD, MD, neuroscientist based at UCSF. And he suggested that I ask you about hang gliding. And I have no idea why he suggested that. But I'm going to start there. And if it doesn't go anywhere, we can change direction. But I figured we would just start with that. And then we're going to rewind the clock. But why did he suggest I ask you about hang gliding? Well, it started many years ago when I crossed country with a friend who had a hang glider, and we would stop periodically and go off different hills, and it was fantastic.

Starting point is 00:38:34 And then I wanted to do paragliding and started to learn it now because everything is developed, and paragliding is a lot more official. You need a license, which I don't have. But one of my favorite things is to tandem paraglide and go off the top of places like Grindelwald in Switzerland, where you can take the ski lift up to 9,000 feet and then jump off and float silently like you're a bird among the clouds. The birds actually do come by sometimes and like, check out what's this big bird flying up here. You can catch thermals and go way up above the glaciers. It's one of the most thrilling and delicious experiences that I know.

Starting point is 00:39:19 That's incredible. So you first experienced that at what age? Probably in my late 20s and did some and then sort of put it aside. And then I was traveling and teaching in Europe and I saw a sign for paragliding and I said, oh gosh, I really want to do it. And started and now each time I go where there's high mountains and paragliding, that's one of my things that I love doing. Most people have these dreams once in a while, if you're lucky, a dream of flying. Or maybe in your meditation, you have this sense of not being limited to your body. And this is the closest thing that I know because it's absolutely silent.

Starting point is 00:39:57 And you're floating there. It's quite fantastic. And this is something you still do? Mm-hmm. I hope to do it next summer when I'm back in the Alps. And how old are you now? 72. 72. Good man.

Starting point is 00:40:11 Well, we're going to then go back a bit in chronology and ask about childhood. I would love to hear you describe your childhood. What were you like as a child? What was your upbringing like? Well, first thing to say is I remember when I got to Dartmouth College in 1963, and I called my mom from the payphone in the dorm sometime in that fall. I didn't call very often, but you know how it is. And I said, Mom, I said, guess what? There are a lot of other really fucked up families beside ours. So that's kind of where we start. So

Starting point is 00:40:54 I had three brothers, and my father was a mixture of a tyrant and a really abusive person and a brilliant guy. I was born on the Marine base toward the end of World War II, and they didn't send him overseas to do, they put him in the medical part of the Marines because he tested so high on their test that they, you know, okay, we're going to use him for something. So he was brilliant in certain ways. He was a biophysicist who helped design some of the first artificial hearts and lungs, worked on the space program, but also did other kinds of weird stuff like work for the army, biological weapons people, not making biological weapons, but trying to design things that were kind of computer biological interfaces, all kinds of creative stuff. But he had mental problems. And so we didn't know when the car pulled in whether we were

Starting point is 00:41:52 going to get Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. He would come in and either he could shout, be abusive, throw my mother down the stairs, rant, chase after us, try to hit us, whatever. Or we'd get this interesting creative person, but we hardly ever had people come over when he was around during the daytime is the way we would, because you never knew what you would get. And so our family life, in my family life, in some way was also, there were great parts of it because I had my brothers and we were like our own gang. We moved all the time, but we had each other. And because he was wacky as well as smart, my father either quit or got fired every year or two. And then we would go from one place to another.

Starting point is 00:42:36 I went to, I don't know, eight schools by the time I finished high school. So my childhood, partly it was the happy things of roughhousing and being a boy with three other boys and adventures. And then in the basement, my father had all kinds of scientific equipment. He had all this stuff from World War II, this huge radio from a battleship that you could tune into a thousand different shortwave stations around the world and projects he was trying to design stuff. And so we learned from him you could pretty much take or design or do anything in the physical world. And at the same time, I felt like my whole childhood was also colored with the fear of his violence and his unpredictability.

Starting point is 00:43:26 And I became kind of a peacemaker in the family. We all sort of had our roles, and now I do it as a profession, right? Trying to kind of make it a little smoother between my parents so that they didn't kill each other. And each of my brothers had their own strategy. My twin brother, who was a lot bigger and much more outgoing, played football, which I certainly didn't. I was skinnier and, you know, I was in the orchestra and he was the football player.

Starting point is 00:43:50 I remember when he first got in a fist fight with my dad because my father was abusing our mom. My twin brother had been, as young men sometimes do, he was probably 13, 14, pretty big, and he was looking in the mirror, making muscles in the mirror to see how strong he'd become. Anyway, he just got into a fist fight with my father, and I was both thrilled and terrified,

Starting point is 00:44:17 but it worked in some way because the abuse settled down quite a lot after that. So his strategy was just to get angry and then later kind of to go his own way somewhat more, although we're all have been very close as brothers. So there was that. At the same time, there was a lot of interest, intellectual interest. So we read and learned about all kinds of things. Both my parents were really interested in the world around us. So it was sort of this next thing of the gift of being together with my brothers and a mom who was basically pretty nurturing, although she kept trying to leave him and never got it together. I think it

Starting point is 00:44:57 was too scary in the 50s to have four boys, you know, no job. And so we were in the middle of this. And the kind of healing that it took, it took a long time to do the inner healing work from the pain of my family. And I remember when I became a Buddhist monk, and I was sitting these first years with my teacher, Ajahn Chah, in the forest monasteriesies of Thailand on the border of Thailand and Laos and I'd be sitting quietly and then some of these memories or energy would come where I remember one monk who had a pot near mine in the forest did something that annoyed me and I just got enraged inside and I said when I went to the teacher and I said, I'm really getting angry here. And he smiled. He said, yeah, where do you think that comes from? Or something like that. And I said, well, I don't know. I said, I thought I was a peaceful guy. I was never going to be like my father. I won't, you know, I'll be peaceful. But it turned out I just stuffed all that stuff.

Starting point is 00:46:03 And so when I told it, my teacher about it, he said, good. He said, go back in your hut. It's the hot season. You got a little tin roof and close the doors and windows and put all your robes on. And if you're going to be angry, do it right. Sit in the middle of that, you know, and sit in the middle of the fire

Starting point is 00:46:18 and don't be so afraid of it because you're afraid of it. You're just going to keep stuffing it. And on the other hand, or if you're afraid of it, it'll just to keep stuffing it and on the other hand or if you're afraid of it it'll just explode there's another way to be with it and so that was the beginning of some healing just to realize that i could actually tolerate the suffering and the energy that was in my still carried from trauma in my body and heart so we're going to absolutely come back to ajahn shah because i have many questions on that chapter in your life.

Starting point is 00:46:48 But just so that I can create the proper visual in my own head. So you sat there in your hut in the sweltering heat with all of your robes on. Were you angry in silence? Were you yelling? I was pretty much angry in silence. And that's an interesting question. You know, in the monastery, the culture was not much that you would yell. You could go somewhere out in the forest and yell. It wasn't decorous or something. People go, what the hell's wrong with that monk?

Starting point is 00:47:14 So mostly I was sitting in silence, and then scenes would come, and I would realize, wow, I thought I was peaceful. In every cell of my body, I also carry both the pain and anger of my childhood and my father, and just the anger that comes with being a human being, a human incarnation. And I was never going to have that. But of course, there it was. And it lasted, you know, this was, I had days of, and actually much longer, weeks or months of waves of this coming,

Starting point is 00:47:45 and learning how to be present for it and not get overwhelmed by it. So I want to backtrack and then connect those dots. So between childhood and ending up in Thailand, you mentioned Dartmouth earlier, and from what I've read at least, you were initially pre-med and then ended up Asian Studies. Could you describe that experience in Dartmouth or how you went from pre-med to Asian Studies? Well, you know, we all get turned in these mysterious ways in our life. We think we're going one direction, and then something happens unexpectedly, and a gateway opens.

Starting point is 00:48:27 So I was coming from an organic chemistry class to the class that I'd signed up for out of interest on Asian studies, or Asian philosophy or something. And it was an old professor, Dr. Wing-Sit Chan, who had come up from Harvard. He was kind of emeritus there, and he even sat cross-legged sometimes, you know, in the front of the room, and would talk about Lao Tzu and Taoism, and they'd talk about Buddhist teachings

Starting point is 00:48:59 and how the Buddha taught suffering and its causes and its end. And that really, all of a sudden I sat up, there's an end to suffering. And he said, oh, there's all these teachings and practices where you can transform your heart and mind. And I became thrilled about it and realized that whatever impulse I had to go to medical school,

Starting point is 00:49:22 probably part of it came from wanting to heal myself. And so I started to take more and more courses. And then it was the 60s, and I became a card-carrying hippie, a card-carrying LSD-taking hippie, as a matter of fact. And at the end of when I was getting ready to graduate, there was still the draft. And I thought, well, I definitely don't want to go over and kill people in a war that I've been protesting against. So I decided to go into the Peace Corps instead and ask them to send me to a Buddhist country where maybe I could find one of those old Zen masters that you read about and got assigned to Thailand. And when I got there,

Starting point is 00:50:02 you could kind of request where you went. And I said, send me to the most remote place you can. I wanted adventure. But I also wanted to kind of, reading all those old Zen stories, I wanted to see if that still existed. You know, and there were little detours, like being in Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love and things like that, that definitely, it changed my life also in a very deep way,

Starting point is 00:50:25 because for at least for a time, there was a window when people were just giving things away. There was such a sense that the world could be transformed. Some of it, as we know, very, very naive. But on the other hand, it also felt like a greater sense of brotherhood and sisterhood than I had ever known, except with my own brothers, who I love a lot. And we've done a lot of things together. And I started to feel like there are other ways for me and for the world to be and live. And that was also very wonderful. You mentioned a three-letter acronym that we're probably not going to spend too, too much time on. But you and I have had quite a number of conversations where I've wanted to

Starting point is 00:51:04 ask you about some of your experiences with psychedelics, including LSD, but we've never really gotten into it. So I figured why not do it in front of a few million people? The LSD, at that point, your experiences with that, did that inform your decisions at all to then go into the Peace Corps and end up in a remote area? It did. And I've written a little bit about it in a couple of different of my books, chapters in books I've written, because most Buddhist teachers and Hindu teachers of my generation also started with psychedelics. Myself and almost all my colleagues in the spiritual industry that I'm in, that was a beginning. And for me, it showed an incredible possibility that all is created out of consciousness

Starting point is 00:51:51 and the possibilities of inner freedom. And basically, I was able, at the best of it, to see my body and my personality and my history and realize that that's not who I am. To become much more the conscious witness of it all, to see, yes, birth and death, and to go through those kind of death-rebirth experiences that can happen at times in a deep session with LSD, or death of ego or a sense of self or removing, and realizing, wow, there's a freedom and a life force that's what we're made of. And that profoundly influenced my interest in spirituality and also interest in

Starting point is 00:52:32 what the world can be. Now, just a few days ago, I was on Maui with my beloved wife, Trudy, and we were visiting, spending time with Ram Dass, who, for listeners that don't know, was the author of this bestseller in the 60s called Be Here Now, and now he's 86 and in a wheelchair. But Ram Dass, who had been at Harvard University and was one of the early explorers of LSD before he went to India and became a spiritual teacher, In the living room while we were there two days ago, Roland Fisher, who is one of the senior professors and psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Oh, Roland Griffiths. Roland Griffiths, rather. And Roland, excuse me, Roland Griffiths. And Roland laid out all the research that's happening now on psilocybin that he's been doing.

Starting point is 00:53:28 And it's success for people, terminal cancer patients, all of losing a great mind-altering substances, when they're used in the right context, can really transform human beings. And NYU, Johns Hopkins, there's a whole series of studies that are happening now that are finally bringing it back into the mainstream. So I'd love to underscore just a few things that you mentioned. Number one, Ram Dass, for those people who want to do additional reading, formerly known as Richard Alpert, if I'm getting that right, also has a fascinating story coming full circle with psychedelic research, beginning, I guess, at Harvard in some respects. So it makes sense to me why Roland's research would be so meaningful to him. And a number of other just quick comments for people. Number one is if you're interested in looking into these psilocybin, which is considered the active,

Starting point is 00:54:38 psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere. I've actually been involved with crowdfunding and funding myself some of the research related to treatment-resistant depression at Johns Hopkins with Roland Griffiths as the senior investigator. And I'll be posting some updates to that. But fascinating work, looking at everything from, and this is also, as you mentioned, NYU and at other very well-regarded universities, alcohol addiction, nicotine slash tobacco addiction, as you mentioned, end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients. The implications are really profound and themselves, well, I'm not interested in taking psychedelics myself, that there are people I know, good friends of mine who do not currently use psychedelics, but had the ego dissolving experience of a non-ordinary reality through psychedelics that then led them to become or contributed to them becoming very, very diligent meditators. And Sam Harris,

Starting point is 00:55:46 who's a PhD in neuroscience and thought of are very well known as an atheist or, you know, one of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse, along with Richard Dawkins and others, is a very close friend and extremely diligent meditator. And he's written about how his psychedelic experiences, which were in some respects, very, some of them uncontrolled, and you really have a coin flip there in terms of which direction you can go,

Starting point is 00:56:13 but showed him possibilities within his own mind that then led to a very, very, I'm not going to call it devout, although I should just to bother him, maybe diligent practice. So I don't want to take us too far off the rails, but you go to Southeast Asia. Well, I just want to say one more thing before we move on, because we are talking about this. It turns out, for those who are listening, that set and setting and intention are extremely

Starting point is 00:56:42 important if one uses these psychedelics like psilocybin or something. To set the intention, to learn, to open, to have a quiet, it's not as a party experience. Absolutely. Brings your attention inward and then see the mystery of your life. Because we tend to live in the daily minutia and checking off our list of tasks that we have to do and completing them, our work or, you know, our eating or all the kind of things that make up a day. And we go on to automatic. And whether it's meditation and other spiritual disciplines, or for some people, it also can just be that they have what in Greek is called a katabasa, blow. You know, somebody close to them gets cancer or or is dying or they have some accident

Starting point is 00:57:47 or something and all of a sudden you step back and you realize whoa life is uncertain the way i've been taking it it's not just checking off the list this is a mystery human incarnation and what am i going to do with it and wow look at this how did i get in this body look at plants and trees and language the air coming out of your mouth that you shape it different ways and it vibrates a little drum in the ear of someone else and i can say golden gate bridge and they can envision it and you start to realize that all of it is alive and made of consciousness and then the whole sense of who you are and what matters begins to shift. And you start to realize that life is not just getting through the hoops,

Starting point is 00:58:30 but it actually also can be a celebration of the heart, of something that you have to bring to the world that you come out of life. And my friend Maladoma Sommé, who's a West African shaman and medicine man, also true PhDs, a kind of remarkable guy, he says with the Dagra people in West Africa that he's from, that they say that every child comes into the world with a certain cargo, is their metaphor, like the cargo ships that ply the rivers of West Africa, and that they're given gifts to bring into the world, and that we have gifts to bring to this mystery, which include opening to it. And as we do, love grows, connection grows, and a whole different way of being in the world happens that we need so much at this time. So that's a little interlude there before we move on to your next question. I welcome as many interludes as you would like to interject. And I wanted to just ask you to say one more time that it was, I believe,

Starting point is 00:59:37 Greek word for... Katambas, which means a blow. It's like something comes and it just sets your life spinning in an entirely different direction. Right, like a catalyzing event. Exactly. I've had a few of those recently that I'd like to selfishly ask you about later. But so I can bookmark, just so I can bookmark this name, Stanislav Grof, if I'm saying that correctly. Yes, that's correct. When did you meet him roughly? What age or what date, just so I can come back to it?

Starting point is 01:00:07 Because this is another thing I've been meaning to ask you about for a long time and get into, but I haven't had the chance. There's two things to say. When I came back from the monastery, and now it's, you know, I guess the year that I connected with Stan was maybe 1973. I made two really important connections. I came back and started a psychology in graduate school. I was in Boston.

Starting point is 01:00:30 And the first really important connection happened when I went to a meeting of the Massachusetts Psychological Association. And there was this guy who looked like he didn't look just like the straight psychologist, and it turned out he'd just come back from India not long before, named Dan Goldman, who was a graduate student at Harvard, and he'd projected on the screen this Tibetan wheel of birth and death that you see in the Tibetan tankas that normally would be taken as some kind of primitive, iconic symbol. And he said, no, no said no no this is a psychological diagram the buddha was actually more than anything else he was a scientist of the mind and a profound

Starting point is 01:01:13 psychologist and here is how craving turns into contentment and here's how aggression can be transformed into powerful energy to heal yourself and others. And he was going through this diagram. And I went and I talked to him. And he said, oh, you come back from monastery. You've got to come over. And so he took me to David McClellan, who had been the chairman of the social science and psychology department at Harvard at that time, the one who hired Tim Leary and Ram Dass, and then later had

Starting point is 01:01:46 to fire them for their LSD work. And his house, he and his wife Mary were Quakers, his home was a kind of soiree where Ram Dass and Tibetan lamas like Chogyam Trungpa, and I think Krishnamurti, and various spiritual figures would come. People were going to India and coming back. And I think Krishnamurti and various spiritual figures would come. People were going to India and coming back. And I connected with this whole group of folks who have now been friends for 45 years. Richie Davidson was another that I met there, who's now one of the preeminent neuroscientists in the world on studying contemplative neuroscience and affective emotional neuroscience. It was a whole collective of people. Dan Goleman, who wrote Emotional Intelligence, that sold 10 million copies and many others.

Starting point is 01:02:32 Then I got a job working for an Esalen-like growth center in Boston at that time, because I was excited at all the new Gestalt bioenergetics, what are the things that are transformative here? They asked me to help set up programs and i thought well who do i want to meet so i set up a program with john lilly and i set up the program with stan groff who was still at johns hopkins and married at that time just married to joan halifax joan groff and we became friends. And so we have, Stan and I, have now worked together for 45 years.

Starting point is 01:03:07 I went out to join him at Esalen for many, many years, spending many months together, helping during his development of the holotropic breath work that's this powerful breath transformation. And he has been a partner and a heart friend for exploration. And we've traveled and we've taught in Russia and in places in Europe and various places around the world. So this is definitely a path that we're going to come down and dig further into. But I'm going to steer us to Ajahn Chah because I want to know, how do you land with the Peace Corps

Starting point is 01:03:47 in remote, well, what most people would consider a remote corner of the world, and end up finding a living master? How does that actually happen? I don't know, but I assume you didn't speak Thai at the time. I did, actually. You did? Because the Peace Corps, and then I had to learn Lao. I did because the Peace Corps at that time, it was very early in the Peace Corps,

Starting point is 01:04:10 had really good language training. They borrowed it from the Monterey Language Institute. So, you know, initially I didn't speak that well, but because I'd also studied Chinese at Dartmouth, it came more easily. And I was there working in the rural health department on tropical medicine teams, mostly malaria, but also typhoid and teams going out to different villages and drawing blood and giving out medicine and things like that. And then somebody said, there's a Western monk in this province we heard about. Do you want to meet him? I said, of course I do. So I went to this little mountain

Starting point is 01:04:47 that walked up 2,000 steps to the old Cambodian temple ruined at the top. And there was this very interesting guy who had just finished a couple years before the first Peace Corps, I think in Borneo, and then got interested in Buddhism and come and ordained as a monk. And I talk with him. He's now, he's named Ajahn Sumedho is his monk's name and ordained as a monk. And I talk with him.

Starting point is 01:05:05 He's now named Ajahn Sumedho is his monk's name because he's still a monk. And he became quite famous in Thailand and then became the abbot of a temple in England. And I became friends with him. And he said, oh, I found a really fine teacher. He said, you know, a lot of them, they kind of take you, you're a Westerner, and they treat you special. He said, this guy doesn't treat you any differently than anyone else. He just wants you to do the work, you know, and learn the deepest way you can.

Starting point is 01:05:33 And he's in this forest jungle. And I said, I'm going there. So having heard that, I went and I visited Ajahn Chah. And he was a little bit like the Dalai Lama. He was funny and wise and very warm-hearted, but also very strict and very demanding, but he did it in this loving way. And I thought, okay, this is the real deal. This guy looks like what I was reading about in all those Zen stories. I read that he said to you, and I'd love for you to tell us when he said this to you,

Starting point is 01:06:07 I hope you're not afraid to suffer. If that's true, when did he say that and why did he say that? So I visited him a number of times and told him I was going to become a monk. And then I ordained in a village where I was living in the Peace Corps. People wanted me to do that. It was a beautiful ritual. And then after some days, made my way down to his temple. That was his opening gambit.

Starting point is 01:06:32 I'm walking into the gates, and I see him. I bow, and I say, I'm here. And he looks at me, you know, kind of leans back a little, a little skeptical. He said, all right, I hope you're not afraid to suffer. Welcome. It was like, you know, you didn't come here just to kind of do some interesting, cool anthropological experiment or something like that. If you're going to do it, we're going to put you through the training. And he did. But, you know, there was like this

Starting point is 01:07:01 little smile as he said it, like, okay, are you up for it? All right, dude, come on in. And what did the training consist of? What were some of the first things that you had to do? And then what was the suffering that he alluded to? What were some examples? Well, maybe some examples. Okay. So, of course, the first training was just how to walk around

Starting point is 01:07:20 and not have my robe, you know, fall on the ground and embarrass me. And everyone, oh, they all loved it. Oh, yeah, right. Look at the Westerner. He can't even chew gum and wear his robes right or whatever. So part of it was just the unfamiliarity of it culturally and otherwise. There were the two kinds of suffering. The big suffering, of course, was being alone with my own mind I mean there you go you know having to do hours of meditation when I didn't know what the hell I was doing and then as I talked about with anger or fear or confusion or you know all those kind of states learning to deal in a very conscious and mindful way and then more importantly in a compassionate way in a kind and loving way, and then more importantly, in a compassionate way, in a kind

Starting point is 01:08:06 and loving way with all the energies that make up my humanity and our humanity. And that means when you sit and you get quiet, anything unfinished in your heart will also come up, all the unfinished business. So, you know, relationships that I'd had that ended badly in college or certainly stuff from my childhood and family, dreams that I carried, things fulfilled and not. All that comes up. Yeah, my friend Annie Lamott, humorist and writer, says, my mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone. And there's some way in which in community, sitting together with others in meditation, and then sitting in my hut, it was really facing myself and my full humanity.

Starting point is 01:08:51 That was probably the most difficult thing. Because then you get insanely bored or insanely restless. And then how do you deal with all those energies? Normally, when we're restless or bored, what do we do? We open the refrigerator or go online or something because we can't be with our own loneliness or our own fear. So that was the inner, and then there's the outer ones. And the outer ones were things like getting up,

Starting point is 01:09:18 the bell would ring at 3.30 in the morning, and I'm not an early riser by nature. I go, oh, God, here we go. Then we walked through. It was actually very beautiful. Then we'd walk through the forest at night, either by moonlight or sometimes you'd have a tiny little flashlight. And in one of the forest monasteries where there were a lot of cobras,

Starting point is 01:09:38 we'd have a little stick and you'd tap the path so that the snakes would know you or feel you coming and move out of the way. You wouldn't step on them. And then we would sit silently for a couple of hours and then do an hour of chanting on a hard stone floor, mind you, where everybody else seemed comfortable and my body was killing me. And then at least once a week, we would sit up all night with the teacher. And he would sit there comfortably meditating,

Starting point is 01:10:09 maybe talking with another colleague that would come, and we'd just be sitting and meditating. And he would kind of peek over at us like, how are you doing? And I'd go, God, it's been four hours. When is he going to let us go back to sleep? And he didn't. So sitting up all night, it got very cold in the cold season, and it got insanely hot in the hot season. And somehow learning to live extremely simply with a set of sandals and a set of robes and an alms bowl. And then you would eat what you got offered in the village, and we would share it in that monastery with others around us. And sometimes you'd get nice food, and a lot of times in the dry season,

Starting point is 01:10:48 you'd get really, really skimpy food, and there wasn't that much to eat. And so picture a day where you get up at 3.30 in the morning, you sit for a couple of hours in meditation and do long, then an hour-long chanting on a stone floor. Then it's getting dawn, and you walk barefoot, three miles, five miles, ten miles with an alms bowl and a handful of other monks and get your food and come back, whatever you've been offered, and that's the food for the day.

Starting point is 01:11:16 And then you go back to your meditation or to the work of the monastery of sewing robes or drawing water from the well, and it's muggy and 105 degrees, hot season. Then you go back and you join in the community for more meditation. And then the teacher smiles and says, how are you doing? And then other kinds of practices. For example, we had a charnel ground there.

Starting point is 01:11:40 I'm sorry, a what ground? A charnel ground, which is where a cremation ground, where people, bodies would be burned. And so on occasion, we would go to a cremation and then sit up all night and contemplate death. Look at the body and then watch as it burned and then do these meditations where you would reflect on, well, this is going to happen to the body that you're inhabiting as well.

Starting point is 01:12:05 Who do you think you are? Do you think you're this physical body made of hamburgers or lettuce or whatever you happen to eat? Are you hamburgers and lettuce? Or are you your feelings? Or are you your thoughts? Who are you really born into this body? Like koans.

Starting point is 01:12:25 So, anyway. And the alms bowl, so you would be, did you eat whatever you gathered in one meal? Was it spread throughout the day? One meal. One meal. You eat one meal a day, which makes your life easy. And at that monastery, things were shared. There was other monasteries I stayed in where you would just eat what was put in your own bowl. And you didn't have to eat everything that was given to you.

Starting point is 01:12:51 There were some things that were, you know, in the dry, poor season, there would be curries that were too hot for me to eat because they used the chilies to kind of preserve the food. But, you know, when it was a really poor village or something, you know, they would have to make curries out of field mice or field rats or bats. Or, you know, I remember eating, there was a curry that was made out of basically grasshoppers that had come swept through, and there was this whole big insect wave of insects that were eating the crops, and they collected them all and made a curry out of them. So, you know, okay, this is what you get for your food today, dude.

Starting point is 01:13:33 I think I might take the grasshoppers over the bats. Yeah, well, yeah. When it's really highly spiced, you can't tell what is mystery. That's true. We all had mystery meat in middle school anyway. This was like mystery meat on steroids. Exotic mystery meat. What was the longest period of time that you spent in silence during that time in Thailand? Well, then I went to a Burmese monastery because I wanted to do this very intense meditative training. And I spent about 500 days, so

Starting point is 01:14:04 less than a year and a half in silence, with the exception that I would talk to the teacher. Every couple of days, I'd have a little 10-minute conversation about what was happening in my meditation. And the rest, I was just sitting and walking 18 hours a day when I could, or so sleeping a little bit. And I remember at one point, it was relatively early on, I'd been sitting and walking and pushing it as young men do, you know, I'm going to get enlightened and all of that and not moving, sitting with a lot of pain, which is also part of what happened at the forest monastery, sitting on a stone floor for hours without moving, really had to learn how to deal with your own physical pain.

Starting point is 01:14:48 And I was exhausted from sitting and walking in my little hut that I had for that long retreat. And after a couple months, I thought, I'm really tired. I got to lie down. But then I thought, well, but I'm not going to nap for very long because I'm on my way to enlightenment. Whatever. I'm going to do this right. So I said, all right, I'll lie down on the wooden floor rather than on the little mat that I had. And that way I won't sleep so long. And I'm lying there. And then I wake up. And I get up and I walk very slowly doing this mindful slow walking to the end of the hut and look out the window toward where some of the other monks and the teachers live,

Starting point is 01:15:30 some way down through the trees. And then I turn around and I start walking the other direction in this meditation hut that I had. And you could walk probably, it was maybe 15, 18 feet long. It was long and narrow. And I see this body lying on the floor. And all of a sudden I go, oh, that's me. And then I realized that I'm having an out-of-the-body experience. And what had happened is that I was so intent.

Starting point is 01:15:59 I'm not going to sleep long. I'll get up very soon. That intention was really strong. But my body didn't want to get up, so I got up, but it wasn't in my body. And I walked very slowly, and I peered down at my body, and I turned around and walked the other way, walked back. And then the second time I walked back, I got closer, and then I fell into my body, and I woke up. I said, oh, wow, that's interesting. But what I saw out the window wasn't just like a dream, because I was watching,

Starting point is 01:16:26 you know, my teacher and talking to these other monks. And then I got up again, and that's exactly what was happening. And that was the first of a series of all kinds of very interesting experiences that happened. What would other examples of those types of unusual experiences be? And was it your time in Burma that found you experiencing these for the first time? First of all, the first experiences, even though I had experimented with meditation back in college and so forth, were experiences, again, that came through psychedelics.

Starting point is 01:16:58 And so I was familiar with all kinds of weird and powerful and mysterious or mystical kind of experiences. But there's something about learning how to navigate it without taking a substance and learning that your own consciousness is the field that you can learn to navigate. First, all the personality and emotions and history and so forth. But then you start to realize that you're bigger than that, that who you are is not just your thoughts and feelings in your mind. And so whether it's out-of-body experience or the experience of vastness and becoming the sky within which everything arises and passes, or the experience of profound silence or of the void where you enter a stillness before experience even arises

Starting point is 01:17:48 or the experience of luminosity where my body would dissolve into light there are times sitting as you get concentrated and somebody or concentration builds that your whole body and mind open up and you know first you get the elements your body can feel heavy like a stone the earth element or it can feel so light that you have to open your eyes and make sure you're not floating because it feels like you're floating in the air or it can be filled with fire and you feel like you're in the middle of a raging fire or it can get icy cold you know or all kinds of vibrations and kundalini energies and chakras start to open and sometimes sometimes it's pleasant, sometimes it's not. You know, as deep energies start to move through your body,

Starting point is 01:18:31 they also kind of push open the places that are held closed so that when your heart starts to open in deep meditation, sometimes it feels like you're having a heart attack, physically painful, because all the things that you've held around your heart to protect yourself start to loosen or when the energy hits your throat and it starts to open weird sounds come out you know and then you get to visions that come in the brow chakra and you start to see all kinds of colors and visions and hear things that all possibilities of the play of consciousness can start to open after both period of silence but also of really deeply training

Starting point is 01:19:13 attention and concentration these experiences just to put them in or at least part of what you said in context for people listening there are a number of things you mentioned, but one in particular, that opening in the chest that I experienced in the 10-day retreat done at Spirit Rock, for which you are one of the instructors or the lead instructor. And it was an incredibly powerful experience.

Starting point is 01:19:42 And listening to your description of some of the feelings, it makes me want to go to the jungle and spend time doing this type of training. However, the 10-day retreat, as you know from firsthand observation and interacting with me, was incredibly difficult for me and terrifying at a number of points where I felt like I had crossed a boundary into maybe even madness where I was fearful I wouldn't be able to return from. So I'm curious to know, during that period of time in Thailand and Burma, could be afterwards as well, but when you were in the jungle and doing this very intense work, were there any particular points when you wanted to quit, to go home? Oh, absolutely. I mean, and I remember I got what I think was malaria, a really high fever, and I was sick as a dog,

Starting point is 01:20:33 and I'm lying in the bottom of my little hut there, high fever and shivering, and Ajahn Chah came to visit me. And in the Lao language, and he was also funny and quite blunt and the Lao language is a very straightforward kind of the sentence structures are fairly simple so he looked at me and he said sick huh and I said yeah and he said hurts all over huh I said it's your test he said hot and cold yeah he said makes you afraid I nod said, makes you want to go home and see your mother, doesn't it? And I'm nodding there. And then he looked at me and he said, you know, this is the jungle fever. This is malaria. We've all had it, but now there's some good medicine.

Starting point is 01:21:15 I'll send the medicine monk over and in a couple of days you'll be fine. And then he looked at me and he said, you can do this, you know, you can do this. So, I mean, that was an example of wanting to show home to my mother. What am I doing here? What kept you going? I mean, I don't want to interrupt, but it's like, what kept you going? I'm imagining 500 days of silence. I could barely handle 10 days. You know, Tim, I mean, what's kept you going? What keeps any of us going about things that we care about i had somehow i don't know kind of a wacky but i think also important kind of passion to say i want to understand or i've started down this road and i want to see where it goes and i think all of us find at a certain point in our life that they're or if we're lucky that something really matters and

Starting point is 01:22:04 you've done it in your work and your travel. You want to explore what your human capacity is. And I've read these old Zen stories, and I want to see if this is true. I want to find out. And then as I started, things started to happen like that, out of the body experience and rapture and changes and openings. And I realized there's really something to learn here. But there are a couple other things that I want to add to this. One of them that's the most important is that it turns out that it wasn't and it isn't so much about the actual experiences. So Ajahn Chah, my teacher, talked about how in his own training for the first eight years in the jungle,

Starting point is 01:22:46 he had been a very ardent meditator and had all kinds of insights in dissolving and samadhi and jhana experiences, all kinds of special experiences. Samadhi is awakening or nirvana. How would you translate that? Samadhi has a lot of meanings as a word, but it can mean profound states of concentration in which the mind dissolves into light or into joy or bliss or becomes absorbed with any one of all kinds of states. So, we went to the most famous teacher of that time, another Ajahn, Ajahn Man, and told him about all these experiences. And the master looked back at him and said, Cha, you missed the point.

Starting point is 01:23:24 These are just experiences. all these experiences and the master looked back at him and said, Cha, you missed the point. These are just experiences. You know, it's like going to the movies and you have a romantic comedy and you have a war movie and you have a documentary and you have, you know, a Disney movie. He said, they're just movies on the screen, some pleasant, some unpleasant. The only question is, to whom do they happen? Turn your attention back and ask, look to see who is the witness of these? What is the consciousness that is knowing these ever-changing experiences?

Starting point is 01:23:58 This is where your liberation will come. He said, become, his language, if I translate it, is the one who knows, become the knowing rather than the experiences. And then you can tolerate anything and you can respond with love and understanding because you rest in the timeless consciousness, which is your true nature. So part of what I also learned in meditation and teach is that it's not so much about the experiences, oh, I want to have this or that experience, but it's this profound turning back to ask, who am I? What is this consciousness itself that was born into this body that will leave it? We can talk about death at some point if you want. What is this mysterious consciousness itself? So there was that. And then I also had the opportunity of being with a few other teachers. And one of the people that I

Starting point is 01:24:54 was very close to and inspired me profoundly was a Cambodian monk named Maha Gosananda, who was the Gandhi of Cambodia. And when I met him, we were living and training together in a forest monastery in Thailand. And it was during the time that Khmer Rouge came to power and eventually killed 2 million Cambodians in a kind of genocide. He survived because he wasn't in country, but all 19 of his family members were killed. His temple burned, all the Buddhist texts and so forth were destroyed. And when he was able to, he went to the refugee camps. Refugees were pouring out of Cambodia by the hundreds of thousands. And he went to the refugee camps on the border of Thailand and Cambodia. And I was able to go with him at a certain point. And he

Starting point is 01:25:46 decided to open a temple in the middle of one of the biggest refugee camps. Here's 50 or 100,000 people, these tiny little bamboo huts, and got permission from the UNHCR, High Commissioner of Refugees, and built a platform with a little roof over it and put an altar with the traditional Cambodian Buddha on it and so forth. But it was a camp with the Khmer Rouge underground, lots of them. And so they put the word out that if anyone went to be with this monk, when they got out of the camp back to Cambodia, they would all be shot. So we wondered who would, if anyone would come. And went through the camp the day, the opening day,

Starting point is 01:26:29 with a big kind of temple gong ringing it. And 25,000 people poured into the central square around this little temple. My God. And he, Mahagosa Nanda sat there, and he was a scholar. He spoke 15 languages, and he was an extremely kind-hearted human being who had suffered enormously and had transformed it into the kind of compassion that we think of with the Dalai Lama or something like that. In fact, they became friends, and Gosananda became the head of all of Cambodian Bhutan. But there he was at this point, sitting, looking out at 25,000 people

Starting point is 01:27:10 who had suffered immense traumas. And you could see there was a grandmother and the only two surviving grandchildren that she had, or an uncle and one niece. And their faces were the faces of trauma and of survivors. And I thought, all right, what is he going to say to them? And he sat very quietly for a long time, just in their presence. And then he put his hands together in this kind of modest way and began to chant in the microphone. He had a sound system in Cambodian and in Sanskrit or Pali, the Buddhist language, one of the first verses from the Buddhist texts that goes, hatred never ceases by hatred,

Starting point is 01:27:55 but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. And he chanted it over and over in Cambodian and in Sanskrit Pali. And pretty soon, the chant was picked up. And in a little while, 25,000 people were chanting this verse with him. And I looked out, and they were weeping, many of them because they hadn't heard their sacred chants for years, but also because he was offering them a truth that was even bigger than their sorrows, that hatred never ends by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. And they were sitting in the middle of the healing energy of the Dharma, of the teachings of the heart that can liberate us. Later on, Gosananda, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a number of times, spent 15 years walking through the killing fields and the

Starting point is 01:29:00 mind areas and so forth, leading people on foot back to their village. And he said to the refugees, you can't go back in a bus or the back of a truck or something like that. You have to reclaim your land with love. And so he would lead 1,000 people, and he'd be in the front with a bell and a gong and a few other monks.

Starting point is 01:29:22 And the whole way back, they would be chanting the chants of loving kindness so that by the time they got to their village, whatever had been destroyed, there was a sense that they were reclaiming not just the land, but they were reclaiming their own hearts. That's a beautiful, really beautiful story. And it prompts me to ask a question that I struggle with answering myself and it's also a question many of my friends have asked themselves and I'll take a stab at it how do you decide when to do deep inner work and take an extended period to do that versus being in the world and trying to impact others in the world. And to just provide a little bit of background on that, I have friends who are building businesses or building careers of some type or families. And I, at this point, do not

Starting point is 01:30:21 have wife, kids, or company to build, at least with a large organization. And I've come back from various experiments, sojourns, experiences over weeks or months and shared these with them. And they've expressed this longing, this deep yearning to do something similar. And then they ask this question, like, how do I best decide if and when to do the deep extended work versus being in the world? And I know it might be a false dichotomy. You might not have to choose, but I'll talk a little bit more just to fill the space. But I had this experience personally, not long ago when I was in South America and had someone telling me in Spanish, which was not their native language, this indigenous tribe, but this Apo, this mayor effectively, who worked a lot with different plant medicines.

Starting point is 01:31:09 And he said that he recommended one 15-month diet, very, very strict 15-month period with many different restrictions, no sex, no alcohol, no pork, et cetera, to develop certain capacities and to practice in effect. I mean, at certain types of meditative practices. So I struggle with this myself as well. How do you suggest someone think through? So did you give up sex and pork? I've done it for short periods of time. I've not a year and a half. I've done it for weeks at a time, but not for 15 months. But what appealed to me about that, definitely not the lack of sex and pork. I like both of those things. It was, he said, that's something you only have to do once in your life and it opens doors and creates opportunities is a really, really long time to opt out of everything else. And I'm not saying it has to be 15 months. For some people, as you know, setting aside even 10 days to do a silent retreat is hard.

Starting point is 01:32:12 And I know there are things that they can do on an ongoing basis, like morning meditation and so on. But for those who are really drawn to this extended, deeper work, how do you think about, and that's why Ghosnanda brought it up for me, because he'd spent so much time outside of his country and then went back and was really on the ground doing work with locals. How do you think about that or suggest someone think about it? First, my answer is yes. Because all of the things that you say are true that, yes, most cultures encourage at some point human beings, most wise cultures, human beings, to step out of their ordinary roles and their wise cultures, human beings, to step out of their ordinary roles and their ordinary routine, whether you go to the mountains or the ocean,

Starting point is 01:32:50 you know, or a temple or change how you're living, so that you can open up to the mystery. And so that you also can open up to love, because what I saw with my teachers in Gosananda as well, Ajahn Chah and other, is that they were able to love no matter what. It was really because they inhabited consciousness in a very different way than just a small sense of self. There was something, a possibility that we could live with forgiveness and love and be really effective in the world at the same time. So they're not separate. And that's sort of what your question is. How do we live in the world? And at the same time, you know, what trainings and how do we connect with something deeper? And part of it is just intuitive. You know,

Starting point is 01:33:34 Tim, if you have newborn, you know, or young children and so forth, it's not the time to go on a long retreat. Your kids are your practice. And in fact, you can't get a Zen master who's going to be more demanding than, you know, an infant with colic, right? Or, you know, or a teenage, you know, certain teenage kids. But with the young ones, you know, your Zen master might say, you've got to get up early in the morning. And, you know, once in a while you might roll over. The kid is crying and sick. You have to get up. Your family needs tending. And, you know, if you're even vaguely a responsible and caring parent, that becomes your practice.

Starting point is 01:34:18 And if you think, well, if only I could be in the great Zen temple of Kyoto or in Ashram in India or down in the Amazon with Tim taking ayahuasca or whatever plant medicine they give. You know, your kid can be like ayahuasca on steroids. Okay, you want to face yourself and your own limitations and your own, you know, you want to look at the small sense of self and find out how to live with a freer and bigger spirit here. We just hired someone to live with you and train you full time. And that's an important thing. But what makes it work is that you have that intention, not just to soldier through it, but to say, let this be a place where I awaken graciousness and inner sense of freedom and peace

Starting point is 01:35:08 as things come and go, where I awaken the possibility of presence in pleasure and pain and joy and sorrow and gain and loss and all that changes, that I find an inviolable or a timeless place of becoming the loving witness of it all, becoming the loving awareness that says, yeah, now I'm having a family experience, and this is the place to find freedom. Because freedom is not in the Himalayas or in the Amazon. The only place it's found is in your own heart exactly where you are. And that's what Gosananda taught and what Ajahn Chah,

Starting point is 01:35:47 that's really what they wanted to communicate. Now, that being said, if you have an opportunity and you're drawn to it, like somebody you might, do you know Jack Dorsey? I do. I do know Jack, yeah. So Jack just did his first 10-day meditation retreat.

Starting point is 01:36:00 Oh, good for him. And he tweeted about it. I wouldn't say it otherwise, but he tweeted about it. I wouldn't say it otherwise, but he tweeted about it. And it was one of the top transformative experiences of his life. And it's not to say 10-day retreats are the be-all and end-all. They are very powerful and compelling. Even if you have a company, or even if you have a family, there might be a period of a week or some days where you can, in fact, get away and step out of those roles and turn inward. And that can be tremendously valuable. So I think both are important.

Starting point is 01:36:33 You just have to listen when the time is right. There are so many things that this brings up. The first, though, is just housekeeping for people who may not recognize the name Jack Dorsey. That's Jack Jack at Jack, I believe it is on Twitter of you might then wonder, how did he get that user handle? Well, he is one of the people behind Twitter. So he is of Twitter and Square fame among many others. Fascinating, fascinating guy. So people can check him out. The comment on the infant being the full time trainer working with you 24-7 reminded

Starting point is 01:37:07 me also, since you mentioned Ram Dass earlier, of a quote of his that I like, and I'm going to paraphrase, I'm sure, but if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family, which I think is a fantastic one. And that's part of the reason, and you know some of the backstory, but we all have, I would imagine, we all have tough things that happen to us, traumatic experiences as children, have extended trip of two to four weeks with my parents and my brother when he can make it. So that's only after being introduced to meditation, something that I would even consider as a practice. And the last point I'll mention just out of my personal experience is there's a piece of paper I have in my wallet and I've had in my wallet for a few years now. It's getting a bit worn down. It's a piece of construction paper.

Starting point is 01:38:06 An ex-girlfriend gave it to me who knew me very well, and it says, the task that hinders your task is your task. Beautiful. It's beautiful. And that's a good reminder for me. I wanted to ask you two questions that are personally important

Starting point is 01:38:23 but also may apply to other people. The first is the question that I believe you mentioned, Ajahn Chah, perhaps others have indicated is the question versus the experiences or movies of these, say, out of body experiences and so on. To whom do they happen? Right? To whom do they happen? Is this a koan? Like, what is the sound one hand clapping, where there isn't really an answer you're expected to arrive at? Is the value in contemplating the question more than any answer? Yes, both. No. Yes, both, and no. It's a profound contemplation for us. One of the great questions of human incarnation, who are we? How do we get into that? How do you get into this body with the wiggly things on the end of your limbs, you know, and the little bits of claws that you have left, you know, as nails and a vestigial tail and a hole at one end into which you stuff dead plants and animals and glug them down through the tube? I mean, the whole incarnation thing is really pretty wild.

Starting point is 01:39:27 So who are we? And then how do we make meaning of it? This is a lifetime question. In that way, it's a koan. But in another way, it also actually does have an answer. And the answer, of course, has to be found by each person. The answer, to point toward it, it's very clear that you're not just your salad and vegetables and hamburger body, and you're not just your emotions, I hope, because they're always changing,

Starting point is 01:39:53 and your thoughts, good God, I hope you're not your thoughts. So you start to realize, all right, what is there? Then what is this self? Who am I? In neuroscience, you know, there was a Time magazine issue on modern neuroscience where it said neuroscience has searched throughout the brain over many decades now and come to the conclusion that they cannot find the self located anywhere in the neural mechanisms of the brain and that it simply does not exist. But what does exist is the sense of self that's built out of a sense of identification with our thoughts and body and so forth. It's all wise and appropriate. We should be. But we also know that it's not the end of the story. And you

Starting point is 01:40:41 know it from walking in the high mountains or listening to an extraordinary piece of music or making love or taking some sacred medicine or sitting at the bedside of someone when they die, that mysterious moment when spirit leaves the body or when a child is born. We have these moments where we open to mystery and realize that who we are is not just our personal history or our body and emotions that we become the consciousness itself the witnessing awareness

Starting point is 01:41:14 that we are the loving awareness that was born into this body and that becomes actually a direct knowing a direct experience so there is a a way in which we also can come home to ourselves and it brings a tremendous sense of freedom and well-being as all the movies of ever-changing life happen to us. So that's why I said yes and no and both. And just a little aside, thinking about you going back to your family as a practice, twice a year as you're doing, I just want to remind you and the listeners that Buddha and Jesus both had a hard time when they went back to their family.

Starting point is 01:41:54 So don't think that there's something wrong with you. That's why they call it nuclear family, I think. Anyway. There's another, I guess it's a word more than a question, that I'd love to ask you to define, and that is compassion or compassionate. When you use that word or those words, what do you mean exactly? Or what would you like it to mean for people? I would like to distinguish compassion from empathy.

Starting point is 01:42:25 And I'll use a simple illustration. to distinguish compassion from empathy, and I'll use a simple illustration. If you're on the playground and you see a kid being bullied and you feel, oh, that must feel terrible, that hurts, that's an empathy, and empathy can be useful. It also can be, you can get overwhelmed by empathy if you don't know what to do with it, but there's some way in which you start to feel resonating you because we are not limited to these bodies. We are actually an you know, scientists like Dan Siegel talk about extended presence, that we can feel empathy with one another when someone's sad, someone's angry, someone's hurting. Compassion is the next step.

Starting point is 01:43:20 You see or recognize, you feel, and then you care. You care about it and you want to, if you can, do something that helps. So that you see the kid being bullied and you realize, I want to tell the teacher or the principal or I want to just walk over there and say something or intervene to help stop it. And so compassion, it's called the quivering of the heart when it wants to move to alleviate the suffering of yourself because you can have self-compassion that's very important or of those around you

Starting point is 01:43:52 and it's born into in the earliest studies of infants you know at yale and various places like that show that even very very very small children have this resonance and this kind of care. And so it's not shut down in us. We're a species that's interconnected, and we care for one another. And this is your birthright, this natural compassion. And through practice and meditation, you can reawaken it, you can extend it, and it can become your way of living and moving in the world. As a little aside, and I'll just bookmark this one,

Starting point is 01:44:29 just got back from a conference with our dear friend Adam Ghazali, our mutual friend Richie Davidson, who's another of the most famous neuroscientists, especially in this area, and a number of other, some contemplatives and neuroscientists and some technologists from the Valley and VC talking about how to build compassion into our interface with the technological world, compassion tech. Starting from the very simplest things of projects like, can you build a Fitbit for compassion, where instead of your body, where you can either note moments of care around you or in yourself, or be prompted to care for yourself. Or when you say to Siri or

Starting point is 01:45:13 Alexa, I'm feeling lonely, and so forth, what kind of response do you get from the algorithms and all of that? Because the UK, England, just appointed their first minister of loneliness for the country. And you'd think it was a joke, but it's not. It's like an old Beatles song, All the Lonely People. There are 10 million lonely people in England, they've estimated. And it's, you know, it's for isolation and loss of capacity and health and all kinds of reasons that loneliness makes things way worse. But there's some way in which compassion is that which connects us. And it's a beautiful thing. Even if you walked on the street and you see someone, you know, who's struggling and so forth, doesn't mean you have to fix the whole world.

Starting point is 01:46:00 That's not your job. That would be egotistical. But you can reach your hand out and mend the things that you can. You can tend the things that you can. And you can do it not because, oh, you pity them, those poor people, but because they're your family. You recognize that we are common humanity. We're in this together. I'd like to build on that and preface it with a comment on the text. So mentioned collaborating with Adam and at least discussing the potential of combining or utilizing technology to help people to develop and harness compassion. And some folks listening might be like, oh, come on, that's so pie in the sky. out that you've already collaborated successfully with Adam on software like Metatrain, M-E-D-I-T-R-A-I-N, which was one of the tools Adam has used in his N of one or N of two experiments in rejuvenating his mental capacity to, I want to say in his twenties. And Adam's, Adam's one of those guys, you can't tell if he's 28 or 45. He's just a silver

Starting point is 01:47:06 fox who always looks young. So I don't know how old he is, but he's not 22. But the Mediterranean was one of the tools that he utilized. I don't remember the the name that he used for this run of experiments, you might know the training that he did Neuroman or something like that was very, very successful. So you already have a track record of collaborating successfully with neuroscientists and technologists. On the compassion front, I'd love to use that as a segue to loving kindness. And by way of personal example, I failed. Well, failed is a strong word. I quit. I stopped meditating after many, many attempts. I had a very absurdly high number of false starts over many years. And it really stuck after a number of experiments and experiences I had doing three or four day trainings with, say, Transcendental Meditation

Starting point is 01:47:59 and having the social accountability. Being accountable to someone else is very helpful. But another turning point was experimenting with loving- meditation. And I think in part it succeeded because it took the focus off of me, me, me, I, I, I, and allowed me to focus on others. But I'd like to read a brief paragraph from a profile of you in the New York Times. This is from 2014. And feel free to correct anything that is incorrect, but I'll give it a read first. And I quote, in the West, Kornfield says, quote, we encounter a lot of intense striving ambition and a lot of self-criticism, self-judgment and self-hatred. End quote. Concerned, he initially turned to the Dalai Lama for advice, but self-hatred was such a foreign concept to the Tibetan Buddhist that he wasn't able to offer any real insight. Over time, Kornfield and his colleagues began to believe that this is the part that I underlined and start, without this foundation, says Kornfield, meditation can

Starting point is 01:49:08 easily become yet another form of striving, quote, another thing you do to make yourself better, end quote, instead of a path to true contentment. Could you please describe for folks what loving kindness meditation practice looks like and elaborate in any way that you feel might be useful or helpful for folks. Yeah, that meeting, which was some decades ago with the Dalai Lama. Yeah, he didn't understand when we talked about self-hatred. He couldn't even, there's no word for it in Tibetan. Back and forth with his translator. What does this mean? Finally, he looked up and he said, but this is a mistake. Why would anyone do this? But then he asked how many of you, there was a group of us who were teachers that had experienced this, and almost everyone raised their hand. So we see that when people begin in our culture, in the West, to meditate or to turn inward, really, that it's very common to encounter a lot of self-criticism, self-judgment, or even self-hatred.

Starting point is 01:50:08 And, you know, there are all the causes from our, these are all kind of conditioning that we got from our childhood, our education, and so forth. But what it means is that you're sitting there saying, I'm not doing it right, I'm no good. You turn meditation into one other thing that you don't do right because you can't control your meditation into one other thing that you don't do right because you can't control your mind. The truth is that you can't control your mind easily. That's not the point. There's a different way of approaching your mind, which gives you tremendous capacities, but it's not, oh, I have to stop my thinking or I don't want to have these feelings and I hate having all these judgments. I don't want to be so judgmental. I hate this judging mind.

Starting point is 01:50:46 It's just more judgment. So instead, as you become first able to become the loving witness, the mindful, loving awareness that says, oh, this is the judging mind, and it's been trying to protect me. Thank you for trying to protect me. I don't need you now. Thank you. All of a sudden, there's a distance from the painful or destructive or self-critical thoughts simply by witnessing them with loving awareness and acknowledging them.

Starting point is 01:51:15 This becomes a gateway to the practice of loving kindness and self-compassion. And very often, people can't do it for themselves. They feel that's too much of a stretch. Like, why would I wish myself well? It feels egotistical. And so the way that this practice begins skillfully for such folks is instead to think of someone that you really care about a lot and to picture them, remember them, put them in your mind's eye and feel the kind of well-wishing you would want for them. You know, may they be protected and safe from difficulty.

Starting point is 01:51:56 May they be held in loving kindness. May they be well, healthy, strong. And you wish them that may they be happy. And you do this for a time, a kind of inner well-wishing. And also maybe you feel as you think of this person that you care about, you let yourself also tune into the measure of sorrows they have, the struggles that every human being has. And it tenderizes your heart as you think of them

Starting point is 01:52:25 because you don't want them to suffer. You feel a kind of rising of compassion and care. So may they hold themselves in compassion. May they be safe and protected and well. And you do that with one or two people that you care about for a time, and then you can imagine, even as I'm describing this and you follow in your own heart, you can imagine these two loved ones looking back at you with the same kindness and saying, just as you wish us protection and safety and happiness and well-being and compassion, they gaze at you and they say, you too, may you be safe and protected.

Starting point is 01:53:08 And may you be filled with tender compassion for yourself and kindness. May you too be healthy and well. And may you be happy. They want you to be happy. I think about when I'm doing this, I'm visualizing some loved ones, and I know that as I do it, I can feel they want that for me. And then finally, as you feel that from these loved ones, you can put your hand on your body or your heart, even if you like, and take it in and then begin to realize that you can wish this for yourself. May I hold all of the joys and sorrows of my life with tenderness and kindness. May I hold my struggles with compassion.

Starting point is 01:53:52 May I be filled with loving kindness and loving awareness. May I be safe and protected. May I be well, strong or healed. And as you repeat these simple intentions that have been done for thousands of years, it's as if your cells are listening. And this is the research of people like Liz Blackburn and Alyssa Epple, who Liz Blackburn got the Nobel Prize for discovering the telomerase and the telomeres at the end of the caps and the DNA, it turns out that your cells listen to your heart and to your intention that consciousness affects your body. And little by

Starting point is 01:54:34 little, even though it can bring up its opposite, I hate myself, I've never been good enough, and you see all those and you say, thank you for trying to protect me. I appreciate that. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be held in love. And little by little, like water on a stone, it starts to soften the places that are holding your lack of self-forgiveness, your lack of care. And loving kindness starts to grow in you. And it's a very beautiful practice.

Starting point is 01:55:02 There's lots of places you can find it in my work and teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Emma Chodron and Tara Brock and so forth. Do you have any guided loving kindness meditations or audio that you can recommend people listen to? on my website, jackkornfield.com. I think they will be on there. I do know for sure, I have a whole series of great programs with Sounds True, soundstrue.com, that include meditations on the mind vast as the sky, meditations on compassion and loving kindness. And I did a book, one of the books I've done is called A Lamp in the Darkness. And it contains, I think, eight or nine different guided practices that you can get either with it on a CD, but you can get it at the download, basically. And Sounds True also has that and has a compassion practice and a grounding practice and a vast skylight mind practice and so forth. So you can look for all of those. The beautiful thing is that you can learn this. And I was, a of years ago invited to be part of the first White House Buddhist

Starting point is 01:56:09 leadership gathering. There were 120 Buddhist leaders from around the country from different communities. I don't think that's going to happen again very soon, but there it was. One could hope. And most of the communities did beautiful things that were involved in soup kitchens and tending the homeless and projects to support healing for whether it was malaria other other diseases in different other parts of the world and so forth all kinds of great stuff and certainly meditation and when I got talk, which was kind of a summary talk toward the end of it, I mentioned that in this historical record, whether it's true or not, the text and so forth described the Buddha meeting with kings and princes and ministers and so forth. And probably

Starting point is 01:56:57 if the Buddha were around now, he'd go to the White House if he were invited. He certainly would have met with Obama and who knows now. And he had advice about why society, which he would give to leaders. And he'd say, if you can train your people to meet one another with respect, to listen with respect to differences, and to come together peacefully listening to one another, then your society will prosper and not decline. And if your society tends the vulnerable among them, the young people, the old people, those who are sick, it will prosper and not decline. And if your society tends the environment around it in a healthy way, it will prosper and not decline. These are principles of compassion and wise society that you could read perhaps in a number of great traditions from the Iroquois nation or from the Taoist sages. But here's the beautiful piece.

Starting point is 01:57:52 Yes, these are good things, meeting in harmony and discussing in harmony and being respectful for one another and so forth. are practices that you can teach and learn that develop this capacity. So that in our elementary schools now, you know, through organizations like CASEL, which is a consortium for social and emotional learning that's worked in, you know, 10,000 schools, kids learn social and emotional learning. They learn compassion, and it changes their lives. They're better academically. And all these kids carry the troubles of our times. They hear the news, they see the trouble even in their own family. To teach you how to steward your own heart from when you're young, and then these capacities are now being incorporated, as we know, mindfulness-based

Starting point is 01:58:41 stress reduction in clinics and hospitals and businesses. And there's the mindfulness teachers when the Seahawks won the championship or the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers when they were championship teams. They had a meditation coach, a mindfulness coach, George Mumford, a good friend, and that these capacities can be learned wherever we are and they transform our life. It's not just by accident or that you have this beautiful experience on the mountains or making love, but you can this is a good segue, which is how can you get a busy person hooked on mindfulness practice? You know, what would be a first step or how to start? And since we're talking about loving kindness, I would like to give a bit of a hard sell for loving kindness meditation as one option, because I recall perhaps it was two years ago,

Starting point is 01:59:42 I was really beating myself up. And for people who don't know this about me, I've spent the majority of my life being my own worst enemy in terms of inner dialogue. I've been extremely brutal and hypercritical and loathsome of myself in so many different respects. And I was going through a particularly intense and difficult time with that inner critic, just ruthlessly beating myself up. And at that point, another friend of mine, Chade Mangtan, who created the Search Inside Yourself class at Google, he was a very early engineer, which became the most oversubscribed

Starting point is 02:00:19 class for employees at Google, recommended that I take a look at Love and Kindness Meditation. And I didn't have any particularly sophisticated approach to it, but I decided with nothing to lose and that I was having so much trouble during that period sitting still and trying to focus on, say, the breath or anything like that, that at night, this happened to coincide with book deadline, probably not pure coincidence that my beating myself up was exacerbated during that time. That was a few years ago. And I began at night, in my case, when I would take a shower at night or sit in a sauna. I very often go to hotels to write, which is something Maya Angelou and a few others convinced me might be a good idea. That I would consider two people, just like

Starting point is 02:01:04 you had mentioned, two people I really cared for and wish them well. That's all I did. And Chet had said to me, Meng is usually what I would call him, that at one point, a woman in one of his classes had done this for one day at work, every hour on the hour, she would just look out of her office and wish someone well that she could see in her mind's eye for 60 seconds or so And she said it was her best day of work in seven years and I found that unbelievable So I decided to try it myself and that week of just spending maybe two to four minutes at night before going to bed Ended up being one of the most blissful weeks in memory

Starting point is 02:01:42 Certainly at that point in several years, it was really profound. And I couldn't pick out any other variable that had changed. So for me, I just want to, for people who are listening and saying, ah, you know what, I'm type A driven, super hyper competitor, this doesn't apply to me, that it very well could apply to you. And that by taking a little bit of the harmful edge off, you don't automatically remove your competitive edge. And in fact, I would argue, just as you mentioned that the bulls and so on used to have, or still do, it used to have a mindfulness coach for competitive advantage, that it can be another tool in your toolkit and doesn't take you out of the game, so to speak.

Starting point is 02:02:23 It just makes you more aware of the games that you're playing. So that's a long sort of infomercial sales pitch that I wanted to just make sure I got in because I discounted a lot of these practices for a very long time because I thought it would at best be a waste of time and at worst take away some of my skills or tendencies that allowed me to get to where I am. So that is more of a confessional than a question, but I would love to hear your thoughts, any additional thoughts on loving kindness meditation, but also any additional thoughts on how, if you wanted to get a busy, maybe even impatient person hooked on mindfulness practice, what first steps or approaches you might suggest? So a lot of different questions sort of woven into what you said. And the first

Starting point is 02:03:12 is that there's a kind of misunderstanding in our culture that love is a weakness. And it's not. There is a way in which it's the force that can, probably the only force that can meet the level of aggression or violence and other such things that are happening in the world. It's the power that lets mothers lift cars off their children or lets somebody like Dr. Martin Luther King stand after his church was bombed and children were killed, and say, we will meet your physical violence with soul force. We will not harm you, but we will love you so deeply that we will not only transform ourselves, but we will transform you in the process. And so the notion that love is somehow a weakness, I think we do everything out of love. We want to be loved even in our, you know, ambition and our desire for success. Underneath it is, you know, we want to be well, we want to be find our happiness, and that's part of love. So it's actually a power. And my colleague and friend Wes Nisker

Starting point is 02:04:18 went to interview Gary Snyder a couple of years ago. Gary is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and environmentalist for 50 years, been writing about bioregionalism and one of our great kind of elders in this environmental movement. He said, Gary, what do you have to say to us now that oceans are rising, the world climate is changing hotter and hotter, the species extinction. And Gary looked back and he said, don't feel guilty. If you're going to save it, don't save it out of guilt or anger or fear. Those are the very things that are actually making the world worse. Save it because you love it, because it's part of you, and that is the power.

Starting point is 02:05:02 Whether you're starting a company, but also it's not just that you, you know, some vision, okay, now I'm going to become this wealthy playboy or whatever, you know, zillionaire. Then what does your life mean for you? And what do you really want? And when you listen, there is something in you and it's part of your birthright to both be able to give your gifts, but also to love and be loved in return. And it turns out that it's a power. So then what you talk about is that it

Starting point is 02:05:32 doesn't take much to begin the training. And you're, you know, two minutes or four minutes in the evening or this woman at her work taking once an hour, 30 seconds or a minute to look at somebody there and offer a well-wishing can transform everything. For people who want the practical support, because it is hard to do on your own, if you go to soundstrue.com and look up the programs that I have, first there's a 40-day program called Mindfulness Daily, which is 15 minutes a day or 12 minutes a day, depending on the segment, that both gives instructions in mindfulness, loving awareness, and loving kindness practice. And it's 12 or 15 minutes a day. And by the end of those 40 days, you really have learned the inner skills. And then it builds up.

Starting point is 02:06:22 There's then a deeper training called Power of Awareness. And for those who are interested, we're about to open an online teacher training for people interested in mindful, passing along mindfulness and loving kindness to others. Jack, just to interject for one second, for people listening, I will also link to all of these resources in the show notes, which you can find at tim.blog forward slash podcast. So you don't necessarily have to remember all these things. You can go to the URL, and we will have direct links to these resources. Sorry to interrupt, Jack. Just wanted to mention that for people listening.

Starting point is 02:06:52 And with it, then, there is also the programs there. There's one called Guided Meditations that's a download. It's like $10 or something. And it has a loving kindness practice, a compassion practice, a forgiveness practice. I think it may even have a joy practice. And it's really helpful to have guided meditations at first, because otherwise your attention, we have a very short attention span in modern society. Albert Einstein, at least according to Scientific American, said, if you can drive safely while kissing a girl girl you're simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves and we are in this kind of

Starting point is 02:07:32 Multitasking world with our devices and we've forgotten how to tend our own hearts we've forgotten how in some ways to really be present for one another and more importantly for our own life And so getting guided meditations is tremendously helpful. And doing these little mini practices that you talk about one minute, two minutes, several times a day can transform you. I was just going to mention to people also, if you look at behavioral change, if you look at BJ Fogg, formerly of the Persuasion Laboratory at Stanford, you look at dietary change, any of of the Persuasion Laboratory at Stanford,

Starting point is 02:08:09 you look at dietary change, any of these things, doing less than you think you're capable of doing is a really good long-term strategy in terms of starting off, rigging the game so that you can win in the beginning, so that your pass-fail mark in your mind is a really, really low hurdle. So I just wanted to reiterate, guided meditation, don't white knuckle in the beginning. Like make it as easy as possible. The same principle from ancient texts say that you start in the easiest way. For some people, kindness for themselves seems impossible,

Starting point is 02:08:37 but then you pick a child you care about or someone else. Or even when you do go to yourself, you think of yourself when you were an innocent child and wish yourself well. The game is to do whatever naturally opens the gateway, whatever is the easiest.

Starting point is 02:08:51 For some people, it's their dog. You come home and the most nonjudgmental being in their life wags its tail and loves you and it doesn't care what's going on in your head. So you take the avenue that most naturally opens your heart, and then you do this just a little at a time, as you said, and it doesn't take long. But the other thing that's important is that sometimes as you do it, it can actually display or show you the hypercritical nature of your mind, the shame that you carry, the self-judgment or self-loathing. And so then you say, well, what do you do then?

Starting point is 02:09:27 Or it brings up its opposite. That's the place that you just breathe and hold all that stuff with kindness because this is our humanity and we all have some of that. And the point isn't to get rid of it or judge yourself for having it or try to fix it. It's almost as if you put your hand on your heart and you say, you know, this is like mindful self-compassion or deep training. This is part of the measure of struggles that I've been given like every human being.

Starting point is 02:09:55 These things have tried to protect me and now I can hold them with tenderness and say, all right, you know, thank you, but I don't need your help anymore. I can be kind to myself. And in that way, you're not trying to fix yourself or perfect yourself. If anything, you're trying to perfect your love. Jack, I wanted to give you credit for help that you gave me

Starting point is 02:10:17 and also tactical advice that you gave me during the 10-Day Silent Retreat. You gave me a lot, but I want to highlight one that's related to what you just said. I was going through a very, very difficult time, particularly days seven, eight, nine. And you gave me the advice that you just mentioned. And there's one component I want to really underscore for people. And that is when you're, for instance, trying to do loving kindness meditation and instead you get the opposite or you get this self-ridicule, who are you to try to meditate in this self-indulgent way? This is ridiculous. Or this voice starts to pop up that is angry or hateful, whatever it might be. The process of not simply dismissing it or fighting against it, but recognizing it as a coping strategy that

Starting point is 02:11:09 helped you in the past in some way that you developed because in my case, you know, the rage was a fuel that without which I probably would never have left Long Island where I had friends who later overdosed on opiates and so on. So it was a gift in a way and a tool. And as you said, you can thank that response or that part of yourself and then put it and I remember you recommended even visualizing and please correct me if I'm wrong or elaborate, but visualize taking that part of you that is a coping strategy, thanking it, and then putting it, say, on a shelf where you can use it later if need be, along with, say, other icons or figures who, whether it's Buddha or other that you recognize as wise, and then continuing with the meditation. So that thanking that part of yourself for the

Starting point is 02:12:02 function that it once served, even if it is not serving you now, was such a key insight for me that then helped me to manage my internal states or observe and appreciate my internal states for the next several days where I really felt like I was lost at that point. So that was a really direct tool that helped me tremendously. Yeah, thank you for bringing it up because it's so important for people. When we come to that hypercritical shame place, we feel very vulnerable and we've been identified with it. And because you needed it, I needed these things for survival. And if you try to get rid of this stuff, you just end up in a fruitless battle against yourself, and it's just more judgment. So what you described as saying, thank you for helping me survive, I appreciate it, let me put it on the shelf or the altar, I'll put it in the lap of the Buddha or whoever, you know, the goddess of infinite compassion, you hold it for me, if I need it, I'll pull it back. And that

Starting point is 02:13:00 sense that this isn't who you are, it doesn't describe who you are. It isn't who you are. It was a strategy because we're vulnerable beings. And you were tender as a child. And you had to make sure you could survive. Thank you for that. And now I have a different capacity. And let me just talk about that capacity a little bit. Because the capacity for presence and the great heart of compassion that's said to be your birthright is a really mysterious thing.

Starting point is 02:13:28 Talk about identity. And when my youngest brother's wife, Esther, was dying of cancer, and she was just a beautiful being, and I spent quite a bit of time with her and with my brother. She was close to dying. I'd gone home to sleep, and I wanted to get up early and hurry back because it was very close. And I got in my car. I had to stop at the drugstore to pick up a prescription, hurriedly running, dashing through

Starting point is 02:13:57 the aisles and so forth. And I'm at the checkout counter, and all of a sudden my whole body relaxed, and I thought, oh, Esther died. And I got out to the car, and I called my brother. I said, how's it going? He said, oh, Esther died a few minutes ago. And I said, I know. You know, I'll be there shortly. We've all had these experiences. If I ask in a room how many have had this particular kind

Starting point is 02:14:22 where you knew someone died when they died, you know, a quarter of the hands will go up. Why is this? a room, how many have had this particular kind where you knew someone died when they died? You know, a quarter of the hands will go up. Why is this? It's because who we are is not this body. We are the consciousness itself. And so with all these practices, what they allow us to do is to step out of what's called the small sense of self or the body of fear and reconnect with the field of connection, of interdependence, of compassion, and to take our history and to honor it, but not be bound by it. One of my favorite stories is of Ram Dass, again, this wonderful spiritual teacher. In the early years, when he came back from being with his guru in India. He was sitting up there and teaching, you know, devotional practices and meditation practices. And he had a beard and

Starting point is 02:15:15 white robes and beads, and he was sort of in the guru outfit. And a woman in the front row raised her hand and said, Ram Dass, Ram Dass, aren't you Jewish? What's with this Hindu stuff? And Ram Dass said, well, yes, I am, actually. I was bar mitzvahed as I was, too. And there are many things I love about the Jewish spiritual tradition, the generosity of it, the Kabbalah, all the great teachings on the many stages and states of consciousness, the Hasidic masters who are like Zen masters. And then he paused and looked at it and he said, but remember, I'm only Jewish on my parents' side. And there was something both witty, which he was, but also profound about it, because we are not just our parental history or the historical circumstances of this place and body that we were born into. And something in us knows this. So that when you look at the, there's a wonderful book that came

Starting point is 02:16:12 out last year, the year before called the Book of Joy, which was a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. And both of them have marvelous laughs. I think people go to hear the Dalai Lama by the tens of thousands, not just for the Tibetan teachings, some of which are actually hard to understand, or even the fact that he's this Nobel Prize winning world figure. I think people go to hear him laugh. That somebody who's carried so much suffering from the loss of his country where he can't return and the burning of temples and texts and all of those things and he and Tutu had a week

Starting point is 02:16:50 together when they were asked and this created this book how can you be joyful how can you laugh like this when you've lived through apartheid and the death of so many people around you and Dalai L I mean, they banter back and forth like brothers. And Dalai Lama says, so much has been taken from me. You know, they've taken our sacred texts. They've taken our ability to make prayers in public. They've taken so much of our culture. Why should I let them take my happiness? And then Tutu starts to laugh and giggle and say, you know, I've been through so much, but I am not going to let myself live in that place.

Starting point is 02:17:28 I'm going to let myself live in that which affirms life and in a kind of profound joy that we made it, that we're still alive, that we can contribute, that we can be here in this beautiful earth. And this shift of consciousness is what's needed for the world because if we look honestly, no amount of technology alone is going to save us. Nanotechnology and space technology and biotechnology and worldwide web internet computer or supercomputer technology is going to stop continuing warfare and racism and tribalism and environmental destruction, those are happening based on consciousness of the human heart. And so we are now, you know, we've made these enormous developments outwardly

Starting point is 02:18:17 where you have the great library of Alexandria and your smartphone in your pocket, along with a million, you know, cat YouTubes or whatever. But there it is, it's all in there. And then what we need is collectively to develop a transformation inwardly of our inner life that is parallel to this enormous outer transformation. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff some years ago said, we are a nation of nuclear giants and ethical infants. I don't know how old humanity is, but it's time to grow up. So that this work that we're talking about is both individual, but as you learn to meet your own life with greater understanding and compassion, it empowers you to move through the world in a different way and to help others do the same. And then you get that kind of joy of Tutu and the

Starting point is 02:19:12 Dalai Lama that you're somehow part of an awakening that humanity now needs more than ever. Jack, I'd love to ask you, these interviews are always driven by some self-interest I always have some issue or challenge or problem that I'm trying to figure out so I reach out to someone like you to help me do it but I record the conversation as we chatted about before we hit record and you know this already but the last several years have been very very important for me in terms of addressing certain traumas in the last eight weeks in particular have been transformative in a lot of beautiful ways. And the duration of periods within which I don't berate or attack myself have become longer. But there are still times when the wheels fly off the car. And this

Starting point is 02:20:00 last week has been one such example. And I tend to, when I make a mistake or feel like I'm backsliding or relapsing, to compound the problem by beating myself up. Then I beat myself up about beating myself up. And you know where that goes. So let me paint a picture. So I found out recently that my Japanese host father, and I've been in touch with this family since I was 15. I'm very, very close to them.

Starting point is 02:20:24 I'm 40 now. And I found out that he just was admitted because the host mother sent me an email to the hospital with liver cancer. They don't have the details yet. I just sent a follow-up email. They don't know what the prognosis is exactly, but needless to say, the worst case scenarios are certainly being conjured in my mind or the potential of those. And then simultaneously have been contending with, and I believe you have some experience with this, contending with a, what should be a very simple construction project of a cabin up in the mountains. And it has been delayed and delayed and delayed. And there have been cost overruns and cost over there have been cost overruns and cost overruns and cost overruns and promises made promises broken expectations set expectations

Starting point is 02:21:10 missed and a friend of mine called with a whole new slew of problems yesterday related to this place and i lost my shit for lack of a better term i mean there are many other things going on simultaneously but i got really pissed and i I was like, you know what? This extending the olive branch being understanding can't gambit is not working with these people. Like I need to, I need to take out the baseball bat and like pull old Tim off the shelf. Who was just this like juggernaut head through brick walls and be like, listen,

Starting point is 02:21:37 fuck face. Like if you don't do ABCD and E here, well, these are going to be the consequences. And then I'm like, well, wait, I'm supposed to be compassionate, but how do I not be a pushover?

Starting point is 02:21:47 And it turns into this big, dramatic play inside my head. And then I wait, this is going to end soon. I'm not going to keep going. But what I then often do is self-medicate with caffeine. And I think it's a way of feeling productive without actually being productive. And it also creates so much volume on the noise. I think I use it to tune out a lot of feelings. So when someone relapses or has this kind of experience, what do you suggest to them? I mean, is there a particular pattern interrupt or approach that

Starting point is 02:22:23 you've found helpful for regaining footing? Oh, so there's a number of things to say. First of all, you could call it relapsing, or you could just call it, yeah, being human. The most beloved poet in Japan was a Zen master named Ryokan. And there's a two-line verse of his that I particularly find fitting for this, where he wrote, last year a foolish monk, this year no change, you know. And you can sort of feel the humor and the tenderness in it. And there's a way in which you see your personality, the point, you know, you have a body, you have this particular body you're born with, and you can transform it in certain ways within the limits of the body that you were given. And similarly, you have a personality. And anybody who has a number of kids realizes that you don't come in

Starting point is 02:23:13 tabula rasa, that you actually, this kid is born and has this kind of temperament. So you have a personality. And just like you don't want to look too closely to the body sometimes, you don't want to look back closely to the personality either. You know, it has its foibles and its fears and all of that. And so you start to kind of look at it and say, oh, now there's a really good example of how neurotic I can get. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. You know, and then you get a little sort of like the keeper of the zoo, a little more tender with those kind of creatures. It's bringing in the non-judgment or the loving kindness for the way that you actually are and not your ideal, or bringing compassion. You could say, yeah, this is a tough one and this triggered, I got triggered,

Starting point is 02:23:55 so what? Now, the other thing is that I had the same experience where we had a big remodel of our house when I was, some years ago, raising my daughter in my first marriage. And we were supposed to go and teach and travel in Europe. And this guy, who was a good contractor, but, you know, everything, of course, gets more expensive when you have to do this. And it kept getting slowed down. And I said, you are going to get this done so we could make these decisions forward to Europe, and it's not happening.

Starting point is 02:24:22 You've got to hurry up. I do that like three or four different times, and it doesn't happen. Finally, I go in, I get pissed and I say, listen, you said this in our contract was going to be done by the, and if you don't fucking get this done by the time of the day, I'm going to pull your ass in court and sue you because I need this done and I'm not going to pay you the goddamn money. No, no, no, no. He looked at me and he said, oh, you really want this done, don't you? I said, yes. Next day, there's a huge crew. It starts to get done.

Starting point is 02:24:50 And I realized, okay, I've been sort of talking meditation speak. Yeah, nice, get it done. He was a fucking contractor and I just had to speak contractorese. Get the goddamn job done or I'll haul your ass in. Okay, I get it.

Starting point is 02:25:06 Yeah, I'll send a team over. And that's all it took. So there's something playful about that as well. It's not that you can't, I've seen the Dalai Lama get angry at people. It's not that you can't use that power and that understanding when it's necessary to get very strong or forceful. And you don't have to judge yourself unless you hurt people. And then of course, that's the misuse of it. But it's just, it's part of being human. Is there something you say to yourself? I don't know, you are

Starting point is 02:25:36 certainly in person and with any contact I've had with you, one of the most compassionate people I've ever met. And I don't use that word very much, but your presence of listening and being with someone is really incredible. I don't know how much of that is intrinsic versus trained, but for better or for worse, coming out of the womb, I've been very impatient since day one. So I worry about, I can get, it seems like my default is speaking contractor ease to more than just the wayward contractor who's putting off work. Is there some, when I feel that the sensations of anger beginning to bubble up, is there something that you would suggest as self-talk or just a temporary pumping of the brakes to make it an

Starting point is 02:26:34 informed decision versus just a lashing out? Well, I could give you an answer, but in a minute, I'm going to guide you in a little practice so that you can find a better answer. First, I just want to say that that anger, you know, yes, it's your habit or maybe your temperament, that's energy. And there's nothing wrong with energy. You know, it's the power to let you do all the kind of things you've done in your life that are tremendously creative or resourceful or daring or whatever kinds of things. So you want to respect, okay, I'm getting filled with energy. And, you know, it might be then you want to lash out. But first you want to respect that energy.

Starting point is 02:27:10 Wow, let me feel this in my body. Ooh, anger, how big is it? Ooh, okay. Then your question is, what can I do to modulate it? I could give you, you know, okay, take some breaths, ground yourself, look at that other person, but instead, as we're talking, let yourself picture a circumstance recently. It might've been with your, you know, the contractor is doing your cabin or something else, you know, that uprising of the injustice of it and how right you are and how you're going to get this goddamn thing

Starting point is 02:27:44 done and how you have to be hard and strong. You feel all that and feel that energy in your body. First thing is just remember what it felt like. And now you're becoming the kind of mindful, loving witness of it and saying, wow, this is a lot of energy. So can you feel that and remember that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now, next step is that the wisest figure you can imagine, maybe it's the Buddha or doesn't matter, some great master or martial arts master, you know, who's mastered themselves as well as their art comes to you. And let yourself imagine somebody's going to teach you how to manage this powerful energy and see who appears somebody appears to you mm-hmm and first they look at you and they smile and they say yeah this is the big energy and they appreciate you so

Starting point is 02:28:36 instead of saying oh you're a doofus you know they say oh yeah you actually carry some powerful energy and they acknowledge that they bow to you yeah Tim you got it. All right? And then you say, yeah, but how do I manage this when it takes me over? And so this Zen master, whoever comes, reaches under their robe and pulls out a gift for you, which is a clear symbol of exactly what you need in that moment to help you regulate it so that you can keep the energy, but do it in a way that doesn't cause harm to you or another. And this clear symbol,

Starting point is 02:29:11 you'll be able to see it's just what you need. So let yourself picture the gifts that they put in your hand and let yourself imagine, see, envision, picture what it is. And if you can't see it clearly, hold it up to the sunlight. You'll be able to. And then let me know what it is. And if you can't see it clearly, hold it up to the sunlight. You'll be able to. And then let me know what you get. You want me to tell you what it is? Yeah, yeah. All right. So the person who came to mind for me, I went through a few, was the creator of judo, fascinating guy named Jigoro Kano, really small guy. Yes, who could throw all the big guys and smile at the same time. Right, exactly. Changed a lot also in Japanese government. Fascinating guy. The symbol, I don't know why this is, to be honest, but it's

Starting point is 02:29:55 a pyramid, the size with straight edges, about a little too big to hold in your palm, that is blue. It's like almost a mixture of pure sky blue, like a bluebird blue with a bit of electric blue mixed in. And it's sort of a smoky vapor that's floating around inside this glass pyramid. I have no idea why that's the case, but that's what came up. All right, so we'll stay with it, and then there's one more little piece. So he gives you this pyramid. Free associate a little bit on what it might possibly mean, because these symbols are like dream images, and they come from a deep place in your psyche.

Starting point is 02:30:37 And this pyramid has a message for you, this blue pyramid. just guess what it might be. I think it's very, very stable. It's an extremely stable structure. And for me, it also, I could imagine it representing power. Also, it seems like a very powerful symbol in many different cultures, certainly. Yep. The blue is a little easier for me. It's a very cooling, soothing color, where certainly red is the color I would associate with a fire, with the high resonance, anger, energy, would be more of a red fire element. So the blue would be a cooling or countering balancing force for that. All right, so now what I want you to do is imagine

Starting point is 02:31:26 taking this blue pyramid gift, which represents a kind of extreme stability and also a kind of power and cooling that's given to you by Jigarokano, and taking this into your body so that there you are filled with this energy and anger, you know, this huge wave. You let that be there, are filled with this energy and anger you know this huge wave of you let that be there and you take this pyramid in and you let that energy be inside this stable

Starting point is 02:31:53 grounded place of power and feel what it's like to be inside this blue pyramid with this energy and feel how it affects it just notice as if there you're in that circumstance. And now I'm remembering I am the blue pyramid. And what does it feel like? The most noticeable thing, I wonder, of course, how much of this is the actual visualization versus the timeout that I permit myself to have. But there's very often a tightness on the left side of my chest, right by the sternum, that I feel when I start getting wound up. And that is absent after taking this gift

Starting point is 02:32:37 and then visualizing it being incorporated. That dissipates. What you're practicing, and you know this very well in athletics, that yes, you practice things, but other times you also practice envisioning, whether it's playing piano or whether it's some Olympic training, that some of the times you just do it through visualization and it in the middle of this upwelling of anger and so forth, and then taking a couple of breaths and feeling the blue pyramid and the connection with the earth and the stability of it, and the power then of that presence that cools you and allows the anger to be there, but not in the same uncontrolled way. Now, there's one more thing, and that is,

Starting point is 02:33:26 if you imagine, again, Jigoro Kano, I believe you said his name is. He comes up to you after giving you this gift, and he touches you kindly on the shoulder, and he has a few words of advice of how to handle this powerful energy that comes up in you because he knows all about it. And what does he whisper into your ear? Well, he whispers, this came to mind immediately. He says, which is, you know, I still have this actually. There are two, he has many famous quotes, but he has what you might consider Proverbs, short aphorisms that I've actually carried with me since I was 15, but they're packed away somewhere.

Starting point is 02:34:10 I have two of them. They're on cloth. And the first is, which means basically, if you work hard, you will achieve, you will reach your target. It's not the best translation, but that's the idea. The other one is zenryoku zenyo, which is effectively the most efficient use of energy, but it could also be the best slash most benevolent use of energy. It's a principle of judo, but it's something that he applied to everything, including education. So it would be that very short bite-sized aphorism, which is,

Starting point is 02:34:46 and I'm sure some scholars probably disagree with me, but roughly translated here, at least as I take it, is the maximum or most efficient use of energy. So take that in, take his intentions, Zeno Kozeno, the benevolent and efficient use of it, seal the pyramid. And now your assignment is that the next five times that this comes, which it will maybe tomorrow or next week or so forth, bring in the blue pyramids, stable, powerful, cooling, so the energy is still there. And then you hear his voice say, zen-yoko, zen-yo, and you go, oh yeah, I can use this, but I can use it in a benevolent way. And try it five times, then text me, let me know what happened. Because now we're closing the loop. If you do it, and see, now you're responsible if you agree that you're going to do

Starting point is 02:35:38 it. It sort of gooses the game a little bit. You go, okay, now I better do it because I have to let Jack know what happened. And let me know what happens what happens well i'll be able to use it this week because i'm flying out to the site of this cabin to meet with everybody and see what the hell is going on so i'll have at least five opportunities to do that you have your zen training ahead i mean the other thing that that's great and then that you can hear in this, rather than my giving you a cookie-cutter answer, is that we actually have the wisdom that we're seeking or that you know, or whoever it happens to be, the Dalai Lama, or whoever happens to come to you, the Buddha, or some other great figure, that actually, the goddess of compassion, that we carry that wisdom in our own heart. And part of what these contemplative trainings do is they give us access, just by taking a little pause, it didn't take you 30 seconds, okay,

Starting point is 02:36:44 he appears. What do I do? Ah, here's how my body would feel. What perspective should I bring? Ah, here's efficient and benevolent use of energy. Okay, now I remember. So these answers for the questions of the psyche and the heart don't require going somewhere. They ask us to quiet and begin to listen.

Starting point is 02:37:10 And as you do, you discover your own inherent wisdom and your own compassion as well, because the benevolent use that he offers to you, where does that live? It lives in Tim. It lives in you. One of the reasons I've wanted to have you on the podcast for so long is that for me, you represent a very wide spectrum of tools. You have developed a toolkit that has enabled you to work with everyone from the seekers

Starting point is 02:37:37 of, say, the Buddhist, along the lines of the Buddhist traditions, to, say, adolescents who are cutters, to war vets with PTSD, missing limbs, and so on. You've worked with a very diverse set of students and patients, maybe even. And that leads me to my next question, which is, after these experiences abroad, why did you decide to come back to the U.S., period? And then why did you decide to go back to school and study clinical psychology? So after the first five years in Asia, there were a few other Westerners who had become monks. It was a handful. And some were going to stay for the rest of their lives. I'd learned a lot. And so that was kind of a choice. Am I just going to stay? And I realized, no, I want a family. I want a lover. I was a young man,

Starting point is 02:38:27 after all, and just the celibacy for those years was actually pretty hard. I want to see if what I have learned really translates into the life back home. I don't want to just leave it. And so it was some wrestling, but it became very clear to me that I wasn't fit for the monastery for the rest of my life. I had other, not only other desires, but also, and longings, but also a real interest to say, does this work elsewhere? So I came back and thought, well, what can I do? I got a couple of jobs and right away. And of course, what I knew how to do was be a student, but I was now a student of the mind and the heart. And I thought, well, how do I learn more about what happened to me in the monastery? Oh, I'll study Western psychology. And so that started me on that particular path. And I learned

Starting point is 02:39:17 a lot of complementary things. There's some very good trauma work in the West that I've learned about that really enhances the compassion and loving-kindness and mindfulness things that I learned in the temple. And now I've done a lot of years of teaching Eastern and Western psychology together. These principles that I've learned are spreading so widely in Western psychology. I went to the largest therapy conference in the country in December and down in Anaheim and gave a talk, you know, here's a room full of 3,000 or 5,000 people. And I asked, how many of you have some experience of meditation or mindfulness practice? And the majority of the hands went up. And that would

Starting point is 02:39:58 not have happened, you know, 20 or 30 years ago. So Eastern psychology is now becoming more invisibly woven into the understandings of clinical psychology in the West, and it's beautiful. Now, I want to say something else. When you talk about working with a variety of population, yes, people in prisons, yes, that's kids coming out of gangs, but also CEOs. And there's a dialogue that Bill Ford and I did. He was at that time the chairman of Ford Motors. He was actually the CEO, perhaps, before that. But then he's the chairman of Ford Motors, and he talks about it, too. It was in 2008, I guess, when the auto industry was just about to melt down, he called. We'd had some

Starting point is 02:40:49 contact. He's a meditator. And he said, you know, I'm going to lose my grandfather's company and maybe the whole industry on my watch. And it's hard to sleep. What can I do? And we did loving kindness practices and mindfulness practices together and so forth. And I gave him some practices that he could use. And it turns out that at whatever level you're on, whether you're incarcerated or whether you're a CEO or whether you're a returning vet, that these inner capacities that we have to be present

Starting point is 02:41:19 without getting lost, to bring an understanding attention to these energies, just as you were doing with anger in ourselves, are really, really liberating. And sometimes what's needed, like for the vets or the people coming back from the war, is also a kind of forgiveness practice in trauma work. And we'll come together and, you know, they'll say things like, I can't tell you what I saw. Because in fact, people don't want to hear the horrors of war. They can't tell the story. And if they do,

Starting point is 02:41:50 often they re-traumatize themselves. And the people around them couldn't bear it. But there's something worse, because they'll say, I can't tell you what I had to do. And so it's locked up in their hearts, you know, and then what do they have? They can drink or they can distract themselves or get in blind rages periodically. But if you get a room of returning combat vets and hold it with a proper space of understanding and compassion, not only can they tell their stories, which they've never told, but they can listen to one

Starting point is 02:42:26 another and say, oh yeah, I've been there. And all of a sudden they're not so alone anymore. And that release of the weight on their heart. So there's a social dimension to trauma where we need to tell the story, helps them release also what's carried in their nervous system and in their body. And there's some correlation between those two together that becomes very powerful. And we need that. I do a lot of teaching of forgiveness practice and self-forgiveness. Those are also on those guided meditations that I teach. And for a lot of us, self-forgiveness, like self-compassion, becomes a very, very important way to liberate ourselves from

Starting point is 02:43:05 what we had to do to survive in the past so that we're actually free in our life. How do you set the stage, for instance, with those vets? What do you say to them or what exercise might you do that opens the door for them to share these stories? So a couple of images, one with gang kids and then one with vets. For gang kids who come in, or these kids who are trying to get out of gangs and might come with a mentor or something like that to some events we've had, you get these guys and their hoods are up and their hats are on backward and they're leaning back and saying, like, come on, man, you're going to teach us meditation,

Starting point is 02:43:43 you're going to teach us, give us some poems, stories. Listen, man, we're out on the street. People got nine millimeters. You got to give us something better than that. So we try to make a setting that honors who they are from the very beginning. We say, well, we can't talk yet about the real things that we came here to do because there are too many people in this room who have not been acknowledged

Starting point is 02:44:08 and not been respected. So would you go out in the parking lot and pick up a stone for every young person you know who's been killed, and we light one candle and put it in the center of a table, and say, bring it back in and say their name and put their stone by this candle? The simplest possible ritual. And these guys, and sometimes gals will come in, and their hands are full of stones. No young people should know that many dead people. And they'll say, this is for Tito, and this is for RJ, and this is for homegirl. And pretty soon, there's a mound of stones and the names of people they've lost were put into

Starting point is 02:44:50 the fabric of the air of that room and their hoods are no longer over their heads they're sitting up like okay this is a place where we can talk about what's really going on so there's something about making whether it's through the simplest ritual or making a container in which people realize that this is a safe place to talk about what we've never done before. With the vets, one of the things that Michael Mead, Luis Rodriguez, these guys from Mosaic Multicultural Foundation that I've worked with for years and are really wonderful. Michael, who's a great drummer and a storyteller and mythologist who's also been working in prisons and with vets and gang kids for years, he'll say, let me tell you an ancient

Starting point is 02:45:32 story of returning warriors. And he has a handful of stories from Africa or Tibet or the Mayan tradition about warriors coming back with their hands covered with blood and, you know, their eyes filled with the martial energy that they can't stop the violence because it's taken them over. And here's a myth or a story that tells about how ancient warriors were brought back into their community. I'll tell you the myth if you want to hear one of them. Oh, yes, please. So here we are, you know, and there's these vets, and already stories have started to pour out about,

Starting point is 02:46:09 I can't tell you what I saw, I can't tell you what I had to do. And Michael stood up and he said, let me tell you an old Irish story of an Irish warrior named Cuculain, or I'm not sure how his name is pronounced, something like that. And he was the most fierce and famous of all Irish warriors. And the Irish warriors were madmen because they would go out, they'd paint their bodies and they'd go out naked. And sometimes you just see them coming and you run the other way.

Starting point is 02:46:36 But anyway, there was some marauding king and army that had come to threaten their area. And so Cuckoo Lane went out and almost single-handedly chased them and defeated them. But then he was coming back to his own town in a chariot covered with blood and his eyes blazing, bearing down on his own town, still possessed with the violence of war, with the god Mars. And they were all terrified he would come and do violence there too. And so they went, what can we do? What can we do? And they went to ask the old wise woman in the village, and she said three things. And so the first thing, they lined up all the women in the village who bared their breasts. And this slowed him down as if it reminded him of his mother's milk or something.

Starting point is 02:47:26 And because he was slowed down, then the second thing they did was take a rope and tie it around him and put him in a huge cauldron of cold water which hissed off his body. And then they filled it three times with cold water and finally his body cooled down. And then the third thing they did is they took him at Stillbound and they lay him on a carpet in the court of the local king and they sang to him the stories and myths and songs of warriors who had protected the kingdom and then come back and released the violence and the fears that they carried and planted their crops again and loved their families and resumed living in harmony with the community

Starting point is 02:48:15 from which they came. And they told the ancient stories and sang the songs for three days and nights. And when it was over, Kukquelin's eyes opened, they untied him, and he was back as a normal human being again. And after Michael told this story to vets who'd been telling terrible accounts of things that happened, in this room, a hundred men stood up, and we'd been working with a simple African chant, a song that was really an African chant of a prayer, you know, Earth, hold me for this living is hard. We all sang to the vets together for a long time as if we could sing them back into their bodies from this,

Starting point is 02:48:59 as if they were lying there in the court of the king. So this is, and you asked the question, how do you make a setting that allows people to truly feel that they can tell their stories and be held in compassion, whether it's the grief of these gang kids that no one's really given a place to give voice to, or that who says, I can't tell you what I had to do.

Starting point is 02:49:22 That's very powerful. And it makes me also think back to conversations I've had with Sebastian Junger, who is a wartime journalist, has co-produced and shot a number of really harrowing documentary films, including Restrepo, and most recently wrote a book called Tribe that touches on some similar topic area and leads me to ask you, are there any rites of passages or rituals that you feel would be useful for every man or woman to experience? And this is something that I've felt a longing for and a lack of since my teenage years. I'm not Jewish, did not have a bat mitzvah, bar mitzvah. I don't know if that serves that purpose in the Jewish tradition necessarily, but are there any rituals or rites of

Starting point is 02:50:19 passage that you think we could use in, let's just say, the United States that would be helpful to, whether it's a specific population, specific group, or anyone? was a relatively lightweight and meaningless thing. You get up there and you recite your Hebrew portion of the Bible, and now you're a man, and they give you a bunch of presents, and there wasn't a lot of meaning in it. The problem that you raise is that of the lack of initiation, and what's true is that it's been forgotten in our culture. One of the few places you get initiation is going into the military. That's an initiation. But a lot of these gang kids, for example, they're trying to initiate themselves, which can't really happen.

Starting point is 02:51:11 You need elders and you need it in a ritualized way. But they'll go on. Maasai people, as everybody's heard, you know, a young man at a certain age of 14 or something will go out and kill a lion to prove that they're now an adult member of the society and that they're brave. And that's part of their initiation. There were initiations for young women as well. And it's not just in Africa, the Mayans had initiations. And in Thailand, when I lived there back starting in the 1960s, at that point, almost every young man and many young women, when they reached the age of 1920, they became a monk for three months or for a year and lived in an austere way. And it was part of their initiation to learn both the inner life of themselves and also a kind of discipline.

Starting point is 02:52:05 We don't have it. And because of it, you know, kids are trying to initiate themselves on the streets by shooting somebody or doing something, you know, that shows that they're brave, but it's not a lion, it's another person. Or it's trying to get the attention of the others and say, prove how powerful or strong they are. So we desperately need these, and we need them built into our education, into our psychology. And I can't give you a simple answer, but one of the people who has the most intelligence about this is a man, a colleague of mine named Michael Mead.

Starting point is 02:52:38 And if you look at Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, his writings on initiation and what's possible here and the things he's led are very, very inspiring. So that's a place that I would look. That's a good starting point. Wonderful. I will definitely find that. Well, Jack, I think we could go for hours and hours and hours. And I always love chatting with you. And I'd love to perhaps even consider doing a part two sometime, but given that we've already gone for two plus hours, I want to ask just a few more questions and I'll actually start with just reading something very short, which is from your 2017 year end message. I think this is

Starting point is 02:53:18 just to inject some more optimism into our conversation, which we've already had plenty of, but this is just a small portion of your year in message. Martin Luther King Jr. describes our collective journey with hope, quote, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, end quote. And Pablo Neruda explains further, you can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming. Renewal is happening. This is back to your voice. Take quiet time to listen to your heart, to meditate and to rest amidst the great turnings. Feel the renewal of spring that can be born in you. Align yourself with goodness. Let yourself blossom like a lotus or whatever unique flower you are, shining in the world, offering tiny seeds of love amidst it all. Blessings to you in 2018, Jack. And I want this note to then lead into,

Starting point is 02:54:09 and certainly you're welcome to comment on that, but which book you would recommend of yours people start with or where they start with all of the many materials, recordings, readings that you produce, because you're a fantastic writer and a prolific writer. You have some of my favorite book titles I've ever heard, by the way, including After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, which maybe we could touch on. But where would you suggest people start of the many things that you've written and shared with the world? And if you have any comments on that year-end message, you're welcome to share that as well. So for books, if you want something simple, I have books like, you know, An Introduction to Meditation that Sounds True Publishes, or I have a little book called The Art of Forgiveness, Loving, Kindness, and Peace, which is very simple stories and practices. If you want something that's richer and fuller, then you could look at one of my bigger books, like A Path with Heart or The Wise Heart, The Guide to the Principles of Buddhist Psychology. And again, I think lots

Starting point is 02:55:09 of stuff online, and Soundstrew's particularly a good place to go, along with my website. Then, and that 40-day mindfulness, Mindfulness Daily, which is, it's like 30 bucks or something, is a really wonderful way to start. In terms of what I had written about the trusting heart, one of the greatest Zen texts from a thousand years ago says to be awakened or enlightened is one with the trusting heart and mind. And that doesn't mean that we won't go through hard times, we always have, and we will again, and we are now in many ways, but that we also have born within us the capacity to meet these difficulties with understanding, with courage, with compassion, and to transform them. And in that way, one of my favorite recent books is called The Better Angels of Our Nature

Starting point is 02:56:01 by Steven Pinker, and he's a remarkable professor at Harvard, anthropologist, historian, talking about the growing consciousness of humanity in spite of the kind of wars and conflict and environmental things. There are so many good things that have happened that he charts over the last few centuries of the development of certain abilities for peacemaking. There's actually less war than there'd been. Respect for women, the reduction in child labor, all kinds of things. And in that same regard, there's a wonderful book called Bury the Chains,

Starting point is 02:56:34 which is about the ending of slavery in the British Empire, starting with this handful of men who met in a British tea shop or printing shop and spent 30 years riding around the country bringing ex-slaves who were well-spoken to talk about the Middle Passage and the horrors of slavery and so forth. And even though the British Empire's economic engine was built around slavery and sugar, by the end of their work, 30 years, the British Parliament outlined slavery in the British Empire, you know, decades before it happened in the U.S. And the Quakers were a big part of this,

Starting point is 02:57:13 and the Quakers famously wouldn't take their hats off for the king. But when, what is his name, Thomas Clarkson, who was the center of this group trying to end slavery and going everywhere to do it. When Thomas Clarkson died, all the Quakers of the England took their hats off because he had freed so many spirits and so many lives. We have these amazing possibilities as human beings, and we're just growing into them now culturally, and it's about time. They are possible, and we each have a contribution to make in it. Jack, I'm going to ask you one more question before we wrap up with just letting people know where they can find you on social media and elsewhere, the website and so on. But last question is one I like to ask. This is a metaphor, but if you could have a short message on a billboard, in other words, get a message out to millions or billions of people, could be a few words, one word, a phrase, a quote of yours, a quote of someone else's, what might you put on that billboard? that when I've sat with people many times at the end of their life that they then ask of themselves

Starting point is 02:58:25 silently or out loud is, did I love well? Because in the end, what matters really? The billboard would have a question rather than a statement. And it would have a question something like, how could I love myself better? So that it actually, it's not that I'm going to tell them something. They already know this, but I'm going to remind those who read that there is something that's asking to be awakened in them. How could I love myself and this world better? Then you go, well, it gets in the way of that. And how could I love that too? How could I love myself in this world better? Well, Jack, I want to, of course, thank you for your time today. But beyond that, I want to thank you.

Starting point is 02:59:10 And this is very, very much from deep in my heart. Thank you for helping me to learn to love myself better. And quite frankly, to see something in the first place that is worth loving. That's not where I've spent most of my life. So it's turned into, if not my, I hesitate to say my top priority because I'm, I worry about sounding self-indulgent, but it's become one of the most important and fruitful tasks in my life is asking that question. How could I love myself better? Or how could I learn to love myself better? So thank you very, very sincerely for that. And the words don't do it justice,

Starting point is 02:59:49 but that's the best I can do right now remotely is to put it into words. So thank you for that. Thank you, Tim. This was a pleasure to do. And what I feel and I know is that as you tend your own heart in a wise way, then it makes you available to bring the gifts, the many gifts you have to the world, you personally and others, but to do it in a way that's on the carrier wave of connection and love, and it transforms everything. So thank you, too.

Starting point is 03:00:17 Well, Jack, I'm looking at a text thread of ours, and I'm feeling the necklace around my neck, which is really a thread, a red thread that was used to close the one of the elements of the closing of the 10 day silent retreat. And I shot you a text not too long ago asking what the three knots meant because I'd forgotten. And this is what you wrote back. First knot equals refuge in whatever you hold is most inspiring and sacred. Second, commitment to compassion for self and sacred. Second, commitment to

Starting point is 03:00:45 compassion for self and others. Third, following your highest intention. And the intention that I've said at the end of that 10 day retreat was to learn to love myself so I could love others more fully. But I've realized that maybe what it is, is learning to love myself so I can help others learn to do the same. And you've been an integral piece of that. And I just love that I have the opportunity to introduce you and your work and these traditions to more people. And I will certainly be linking to where everyone can find you online.

Starting point is 03:01:22 But are there any particular best places, just to reiterate, where people can find you? And I are there any particular best places just to reiterate where people can find you? And I'll link to these in the show notes. JackKornfield.com and also look up Jack Kornfield on SoundsTrue.com for those programs that I talked about. And then SpiritRock.org, which is our great meditation center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Starting point is 03:01:42 Absolutely stunning, stunning, beautiful location. Worth visiting just to bathe in the scenery, but many more reasons to visit as well. Well, Jack, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure. And to everybody listening,

Starting point is 03:01:57 you can find show notes, links to all the resources, books, and everything that we discussed at tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you so much for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday.

Starting point is 03:02:14 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

Starting point is 03:02:37 It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday,

Starting point is 03:03:09 type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers, that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions and on and on. They have you covered.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #751: Elizabeth Gilbert and Jack Kornfield

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